Customers who avail our services via term contracts (annual, half-yearly, quarterly or monthly), pay us in advance for pre-decided quantities of resources (mailboxes, storage, etc).
However, we understand that your organisation is growing and it may not be possible to predict the growth in your usage upfront during your initial purchase.
Hence, mid-term, you may exhaust the resources that you had purchased upfront and may need a top-up.
Or
You may need to avail of some additional on-demand services from us, such as email migration, training, etc.
In the current scenario of your Contracts
- For adding users, you raise a request to increase your purchased user count and we send you a prorated bill matching your contract term.
- For adding extra cumulative storage on SkyConnect and extra storage on Vaultastic HOLD, you raise a request and we send you a prorated bill matching your contract term (Extra storage use has been unrestricted and un-billed until the 1st of Sept 2019)
- There are other useful services and tools from us, which you could leverage for your business.
We’ve been listening to you and have come up with a series of improvements to simplify your purchase, upgrades, and billing for the extra services and resources you consume during your contract period.
We are happy to announce the first of the improvements:
- On SkyConnect, you can stretch your cumulative storage consumption, beyond your purchased quantities.
- Our systems will track your extra usage, pro-rated by a day.
- At the end of every month, you will receive a pro-rated bill for your extra storage usage during the month.
Can you explain this variable monthly billing for contracts, with an example?
Scenario – Your organisation needs more storage
- OrgA signs up for an annual contract starting on 1st of Jan, for 500 email users and 1 TB of storage.
- Until April their storage usage stays under 1 TB storage. In May their storage starts growing above 1 TB.
- During May, every day, it grows and at the end of May the storage is 1.1TB
- End of May, they will receive a prorated bill for the 100 GB, mapped to their daily growth.
- Thereafter every month, they will receive a prorated monthly bill for the 100 GB or more extra storage being consumed in that month
- Let’s say on July 31st they delete the extra 100 GB.
- In August, the bill for extra storage usage will be reduced by 100 GB
- At the point of annual contract renewal, it can be rationalised to the current level of storage utilisation
Roll out schedules: When does this monthly variable billing model for contracts, become active?
We are upgrading our systems in parts and would be rolling this out in the following sequence
| Resource/Module | Date of roll out | Status |
|---|---|---|
| Extra storage consumption on SkyConnect | 01 Sept. 2019 | This is done and an initial alert was sent in September, which was followed by proforma invoices for review to customers who are using storage in excess of their purchase. The tax invoices have also been despatched and then recur monthly as per actual usage. |
| Migration of Legacy data using Legacyflo | Planned | We will be opening this tool to all our customers, which will allow you to migrate legacy email data from files or other mailboxes into SkyConnect or Vaultastic. This will then be metered as per the jobs executed, followed by a monthly bill. |
| Additional users created on SkyConnect | Planned | We are considering to relax the limit on the number of users in your license to more than your purchased quantities, allowing you to stretch a during the month as per your need. The extra users will then be metered, pro-rated daily and an aggregate bill sent to you monthly. |
| Extra storage consumption on Vaultastic Hold | Planned | While you buy a block of storage for HOLD, our systems allow you to stretch the storage consumed and we track this extra storage consumed on a daily pro-rata to send you an aggregate bill monthly. |
| Additional users created on Vaultastic’s retention based plans | Planned | We are considering to relax the limit on the number of users in your license to more than your purchased quantities, allowing you to stretch a during the month as per your need. The extra users will then be metered, pro-rated daily and an aggregate bill sent to you monthly. |
As always, we thank you for all your suggestions to help us improve our services and the system of doing business to make your life easier.
Please stay tuned to more alerts from us regarding the other planned items. You can stay in touch by subscribing to our newsletter.
Questions? Please leave a comment below.