It's reasonable that a provider may have to make a change to the service or SLA, but customers should be notified of the changes. It is best practice to have an out clause that allows the customer to terminate the contract if unacceptable changes are made as well. One tip is to ensure that any changes that are made are done so uniformly throughout the company's offering to all customers. "There's safety in numbers," he says.

Service respond time

One of the chief benefits of cloud computing is its elastic nature and the agility it gives customers to dynamically scale their IT usage based on their exact demands. If that's an important function for the user, Overly says it should be discussed with your provider. "Many people focus on availability, but sometimes just as important is the quality of the service," he says. If the customer's business relies on the ability to spin up new resources quickly, for example, perhaps that should be written into the SLA.

One innovative solution Overly has seen regarding this issue is vendors agreeing to survey their customers periodically, anywhere from once a year to quarterly, to monitor the quality of their service. If there are declines in customer service results, then the provider may agree to make changes, for example. This is helpful particularly in multi-year agreements, he says, and it's good for both the customer and the vendor. It provides the customer with assurances that the provider will continually improve or provide the expected service, and it allows the vendor to ensure they have satisfied customers.

Notification of security issues