Backup Billing
Published on April 25, 2024 in Uncategorized
Good evening, everyone. Following our year-end inventories, we realized that we had significantly underestimated the amount of backup storage our clients would use. In practice, as I write this, we are currently spending more to store client backups than we bill for them.
This situation will require several actions and individual conversations to put things on a sound footing. What exactly is the situation, and what does it mean for you?
First, the backup price is not changing: it is still billed per GB provisioned, and we do not plan to change the billing system.
There are currently two main types of accounts:
Clients and partners.
Partner accounts are theoretically adjusted based on actual usage, but as with every rule, there are exceptions. In practice, as of today, backup volume is not adjusted to actual usage, but rather to the exact impact of the raw storage cost for us. Put simply, this means that the margin applied is 0% at best (not counting operating costs).
For clients who are not partners, the only adjustments made are based on the amount of production storage used. For example, if a client was using 100 GB of space with an associated backup volume of 100 GB, and production storage increased to 200 GB, the backup volume was increased proportionally.
We do not like surprises, and we assume you do not either. Here is what will happen next:
1) We will conduct a detailed audit of every partner and every client, one by one (some have pooled backups shared across several infrastructures, and so on).
2) We will contact each of you individually with these figures and a set of options. You will be free to choose the one that works best for you, including:
– Adjusting the billed amount to actual usage
– Changing the current retention policy to reduce the space used
– Excluding certain items, with an explanation of the associated risks
– For ScalarCloud or PrivateCloud clients: limiting backups to one type instead of two
– Identifying “suspicious” usage in your user space that you may be able to remove, reducing the amount of backup storage used
In short, there will be many options, allowing each of you to find the right balance and choose the backup policy best suited to your situation.
Wishing you an excellent end to the week.
—
Christophe Casalegno
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