On June 26th, the European Commission launched the C-SIG, guidelines for standardisation to help business users save money and get the most out of cloud computing services. 

Cloud Service Level Agreements (Cloud SLAs) form an important component of the contractual relationship between a cloud service customer and a cloud service provider of a cloud service. Given the global nature of the cloud, SLAs usually span many jurisdictions, with often varying applicable legal requirements, in particular with respect to the protection of the personal data hosted in the cloud service. Furthermore different cloud services and deployment models will require different approaches to SLAs, adding to the complexity of SLAs. Finally, SLA terminology today often differs from one cloud service provider to another, making it difficult for cloud service customers to compare cloud services. For the avoidance of doubt, this document does not address consumers as 
being cloud service customers.
Standardising aspects of SLAs improves the clarity and increases the understanding of SLAs for cloud services in the market, in particular by highlighting and providing information on the concepts usually covered by SLAs. 
In that context, under the second key action, the Cloud Computing Strategy calls for the development of standardisation guidelines for cloud computing service level agreements for contracts between cloud service providers and cloud service customers (not being consumers). In February 2013 the European Commission, DG CONNECT set up the Cloud Select Industry Group – Subgroup on Service Level Agreement (C-SIG-SLA) to work on this aspects. The C-SIG SLA subgroup, an industry group facilitated by the European Commission DG Connect, has prepared this document to provide a set of SLA standardisation guidelines for cloud service providers and professional cloud service customers, while ensuring the specific needs of the European cloud market and industry are 
taken into account.

More information and the C-SIG can be downloaded on the DG-CONNECT website.