Flexibility in licenses activation / deactivation and type mix

Daniele Di Lorenzo

I think that moving from a "buy license" to a "rent license"  and from “On Premise” to “SaaS” means a significant change of paradigm in terms of flexibility.
As most of the SaaS providers, the licenses configuration should be customizable during the contract validity among different aspects.

The first aspect would be having a clear economic condition (pricelist) which should be applied during contract validity for quick activation of additional licenses, without having time consuming proposal also for few licenses.

The second aspect is related to the ability of the customer to change the number or type of licenses at any time by paying the difference (or not if the change is between two configuration at the same total price).

Example of configuration:

The customer have a “base package” including e.g. 100 licenses, defined at contract start.

Then, for any variation of license beyond the base package:

Once pricelist for the “unit license” is defined for the current contract (example Lite = 1 unit, User = 2 units…) the customer have unlimited licenses available.

Any activation / deactivation / type change should be evaluated for billing looking at invoicing period (could be monthly or yearly) as following:

1. Once a user is created it’s counted for the billing from the creation day to period end.
2. Once a user is deactivated won’t be counted for billing starting from next invoicing period.
3. Once the type is changed in upscaling it’s counted for the billing from the change day to period end, considering the type variation
4. Once the type is changed in downscaling it’s counted for the billing starting from next invoicing period (reduction)

Possible ways to apply the changes:

• Sending a request through the support portal (a specific form to fill related to customer contract), to be appliead in a reasonable time (e.g. 48h)
• Directly from subhub through flag “disabled”, deleting a user or changing license type. Reference for billing will be the audit log

This approach will provide a better service perception to customers, making new investments effective and valuable, and furtherly promoting Board expansion.

thanks

Daniele Di Lorenzo

Moreover, giving this possibility to Cloud customers only, this can encourage customers to move to cloud!