2024 avril

Backup’s billing

Posted by brain in Non classé on 25 avril 2024 with No Comments

Good evening everyone,
 
After our year-end inventories, we have realized that we significantly underestimated the volume of backups our clients would use. Currently, as I write this message, we are spending more on storing client backups than we are billing for them.
 
This situation will lead to several actions and communications to rectify the issue. What does this mean for you in practice?
 
Firstly, the price of backups will not change: it is still billed per GB provisioned, and we do not plan to change the billing system.
 
Currently, there are two main types of accounts:
 
Clients and partners.
 
Partners are theoretically adjusted based on actual consumption, but as with any rule, there are exceptions: in practice, the backup volume is not adjusted to actual consumption, but rather to the exact impact of the raw storage cost for us. Simply put, this means that in the best case scenario, the applied margin is 0% (not considering operational costs).
 
For non-partner clients, the only adjustments made relate to the ratio with the consumed production storage. For example, for a client who used 100G of space and had an associated backup volume of 100G, if the production storage increased to 200G, then the backup was increased proportionally.
 
As we dislike surprises and assume you do too, here is how we will proceed:
 
1) We will conduct a thorough audit of each partner and client one-on-one (some have consolidated backups shared across several infrastructures, etc.)
 
2) We will individually come back to each of you with these values, and options from which you will be free to choose the one that suits you best, including:
 
– Adjusting the billed amount to the actual consumption
– Modifying the current retention to reduce the space used
– Excluding certain elements (highlighting associated risks)
– For ScalarCloud or PrivateCloud clients: limiting to one type of backup rather than two.
– Pointing out « suspicious » consumption in the user space that you might be able to do without, which will allow for less backup volume usage.
 
In summary, there will be many options allowing each of you to find what works best and choose the most suitable backup policy for your situation.
 
Wishing you an excellent end of the week in advance.
 
—
Christophe Casalegno