Have you ever thought about buying a star? There are companies that create star “registries” and sell the chance to name a star for someone special. You don’t really own the physical star, and no scientific agency recognizes the name as official, but your loved one gets a nice certificate and a photo of a twinkling ball of plasma in a constellation far, far away. All in all, it seems fairly easy to buy a tiny piece of the night sky.

It’s not so simple for the cloud. Like a star, your customers can’t actually touch the cloud they’re buying; they don’t own the physical infrastructure and there’s no scientific four-letter agency overseeing the process. While there aren’t (yet) as many cloud providers and different service models as there are constellations, it sure seems that way sometimes.

Clearly, your customers need expert advice on how to migrate their environments to the cloud. As a trusted adviser and partner, are you fully equipped to navigate your way toward the best solution for your clients? Here are five things you may not know about cloud service providers, but should:

1. A contractually based service-level agreement (SLA) may not cover what you think it covers.

For example, some SLAs cover virtual machines (VMs) only in a given region. At other companies, guaranteed SLAs cover each individual virtual machine. You need to find out whether or not your cloud provider offers guaranteed SLAs across a range of recovery-point objective (RPO) and recovery-time objective (RTO) options. What compensation is given if the service is down for an extended period? Remember, this will be a service credit and will not cover consequential loss. Make sure the customer understands the limits of any SLA.

2. The service provider may not have much experience supporting hybrid environments.

Mixing legacy and cloud-based IT is the new normal. Make sure your cloud service provider has the breadth and depth of portfolio, plus experience, to support hybrid environments. Cloud is an evolutionary concept that brings together elements from various existing technologies to offer a useful new IT tool. Therefore, it is vital that resiliency is at the heart of the cloud infrastructure, and that investments are made in availability, integration and continuity. Due diligence in this area is important. If you choose the wrong cloud supplier, not only is your customer’s business potentially at risk, so is your relationship with that customer.

3. The service provider may not have much experience with availability and disaster recovery.

Cloud does not have DR “built-in.” Find a cloud partner with a strong availability track record and failover capabilities. When businesses rely on infrastructure, software and services delivered via the Internet, they leave themselves vulnerable to network outages. The Internet is highly resilient, but international and local access difficulties have occurred due to physical damage to underwater cables, governments restricting access to networks and local providers experiencing downtime. It’s also important to understand the potential impact of Internet latency on cloud computing. Bandwidth is not unlimited, and public cloud computing users may experience difficulties with processing speeds during periods of peak demand.

4. Security and regulatory compliance may be an afterthought.

Check to see if the provider has the needed expertise to handle regulatory requirements, such as PCI-DSS (Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard) and HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accounting Act). Also evaluate any service providers’ approach to certification. Not only should the company as a whole be certified, but employees should also be trained and tested where applicable. The provider must adhere to ISO-audited procedures (such as those in ISO 20000-1 and their processes backed by the ITI Lv3 framework). Find out how they ensure compliance. For example, what auditing practices do they follow?

5. The service provider may be vendor neutral, but that doesn’t mean it has strong vendor ties.

Today many major technology vendors, including Cisco, EMC, NetApp and others, have formed programs that encourage service providers to work with solution providers on delivering comprehensive cloud offerings to customers. Does the service provider you are considering have strong relationships with the vendors whose products you already sell? Are there joint training, marketing and sales tools you can leverage to make the most out of this partnership investment?

Also, look for a provider that offers expertise and services in the key applications your customers use, such as SAP, Oracle and Microsoft SQL and Exchange. Can the provider present a range of use cases, from test and development to running enterprise ERP systems, such as Oracle and SAP, in the cloud? That expertise can make customers more comfortable moving mission-critical applications to the cloud. Make sure the vendor you choose is not a one-trick pony.

In the long run, you will be more valuable to your customer if your chosen cloud partners have strong industry experience and partnerships. At my own company, for example, we have a full spectrum of cloud offerings ranging from public cloud to hybrid public cloud to private cloud. SAP and Oracle clouds are certified especially for the unique needs of those ERP applications.

IT trade association CompTIA recognizes that helping solution providers vet their cloud service providers is important, and in March, CompTIA announced a new Cloud Trustmark. “The new CompTIA Cloud Trustmark+ is a business-level credential designed to accredit and differentiate the IT channel’s best-practice cloud vendors and distributors,” said the org in a statement. Such tools could go a long way to helping solution providers make the right decisions for their own businesses as well as those of their customers.

Taken together, a cloud service-provider partner that offers stellar features, services and attributes will help you become a trusted adviser — maybe even a shining star that your clients will trust to guide them whenever they’re looking to migrate critical applications in the cloud.

Carmen Sorice is senior vice president of channels at Sungard Availability Services. Follow @SungardAS on Twitter.