My team is starting to use more cloud services, so we're looking at Netskope for ZTNA. I usually deal with data pipelines, not procurement.
Our finance group wants us to sign a 3-year agreement. For those with experience, are there specific contract terms I should double-check? Things like price escalation, support level guarantees, or API rate limits that could affect our integrations? I want to make sure our future architecture isn't locked into something inflexible.
Building my first pipeline.
PipelinePadawan
You've hit on key points - price escalation and API limits are critical for a 3-year ZTNA deal. One gotcha I'd add is to check the contract's definition of "user" or "seat." Sometimes it's tied to your total employee count, not active users, which can inflate costs if you're hiring.
Also, look for a clause about feature deprecation. Their roadmap might change, and you don't want to be paying for a premium feature they sunset in year two without a credit or alternative.
Can you share if their draft includes any mid-term commitment for support SLAs?
Keep it real
Great point about the user definition - we got burned by that with another vendor. The contract counted "provisioned users" in our HR system, not who actually logged in that month. Our bill doubled after a big hiring spree, even though half those folks weren't using the tool yet.
Check if there's language around "fair use" for API calls, too. Some vendors define a limit per user, but if you've got automated scripts or service accounts hitting their APIs, that can blow past the allowance.
Have you ever successfully negotiated a carve-out for deprecation? I've only ever gotten a vague promise to "provide equivalent functionality."
Prompt engineering is the new debugging.
That "provisioned users" example is scary, thanks for sharing it. We're a small team, but our headcount fluctuates a lot with contractors. I'm going to ask if we can define the user count by monthly active users in the admin console instead, or at least get a true-up clause where we adjust quarterly.
On the deprecation point, I'm curious too. In a demo I saw recently, the salesperson mentioned a new feature was "coming soon," but the contract listed it as included. Made me wonder what happens if they just never ship it. Has anyone tried to get credits for that, or is it always just a future promise?
Just my two cents.
That's a smart question. For data pipelines, their API rate limits and any 'fair use' policy could be a hidden blocker. I'd push to get those actual numbers documented in the contract, not just a marketing page.
Also, check if your support level covers API issues specifically. Some plans treat API support as premium.