Cloud pricing philosophy

Original author: Andrew Gierer
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We have repeatedly shared practical cases of optimizing our own IT infrastructure, but did not touch on pricing at all. Let's try to start a conversation on this topic with a brief discussion in relation to the field of cloud services. / photo Chris Potter CC




Situation


Consider an example related to our business. We provide IT infrastructure for rent to companies and individuals. The market for such services is currently on the rise - supply and demand are constantly increasing.

One reason is the global revision of business models that can be created using cloud services. Competition does not allow companies to lag behind colleagues who already use new tools to the full.

IaaS is no exception. Virtual infrastructure allows you to abandon capital investments on your own equipment, which requires support, maintenance, scaling and updating.

In addition, the IaaS provider has a much more favorable position for the recruitment of competent specialists. This allows him to accumulate expertise - experts face specialized tasks every day and accumulate their own knowledge base, which is very difficult to do on the scale of even medium-sized businesses with their IT infrastructure.

This approach provides the necessary flexibility for customers - you can not only save, but also spend time solving business problems, rather than a server maintenance routine. Companies can quickly deploy new resources or reduce those that are not currently in use.

Characters


This example clearly demonstrates the potential benefits, but in fact it turns out to be incomprehensible to many entrepreneurs. The problem may be how to work with specific customer segments. Speaking in a different terminology, here we are talking about grouping a portfolio of clients by charred types or characters.

Many companies have a good command of this tool and competently use it not only to attract new customers, but for additional sales to those who have been working with them for quite some time.

Understanding the portrait helps not only with building a pricing policy, but also analyzing the effectiveness of certain functionalities that you launch. In this case, the user characters can be grouped differently and have completely different portrait characteristics.

Process


It is important to understand that pricing is an ongoing process that depends on a number of variables. Experts advise you to pay attention to the degree of importance of the functionality of your product or service to customers.

If we are talking about a service that is quite complicated in terms of its device (for example, the services of an IaaS provider), then it can be difficult for an average person to choose a suitable tariff. One of our fundamental operating principles is to provide simple and straightforward tools. In this situation, we likewise meet even those customers who have not previously encountered issues related to IT infrastructure.

To do this, we proposed a simple calculator on the main pagesite. It allows you to quickly assess the level of costs for renting certain resources.

PS A little about the work of our IaaS provider 1cloud :


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