Databarracks simplifies 'overly complex' channel pricing

Disaster recovery provider admits it had been guilty of confusing customers and partners as it moves to per-server pricing model

Disaster recovery outfit Databarracks has unveiled a new pricing structure for channel partners after admitting its traditional approach was confusing and overly complicated.

Its new "streamlined" disaster recovery-as-a-service (DRaaS) model sees costs fixed on a per-server and per-terabyte basis, which it claims will allow partners to produce accurate quotes "in minutes".

Peter Groucutt, managing director at Databarracks, said: "When evaluating suppliers and buying a DR service, a number of factors that need to be considered. Understanding how the service is priced shouldn't be an arduous task but a lot of pricing models can make it overly complicated. We have been guilty of it ourselves."

The global DRaaS market will grow from $1.42bn (£914m) this year to be worth $11.53bn by 2020, according to analyst MarketsandMarkets. Competing against the likes of Sungard Availability Services and Phoenix IT Group, Databarracks' sweet spot is firms with £5m to £100m turnover, with its marquee clients including ITV and Legal & General.

Databarracks' traditional prices could be hard to understand, Groucutt said, with customers required to do an inventory of their servers, storage and compute in order to get an accurate quote. Not only was this time consuming, it also exposed them to the risk of costing based on inaccurate data, leading to a higher monthly cost than expected, he said.

"Partners can now produce accurate quotes on their own and can do it within minutes with just a small amount of information from the customer," Groucutt added.

"It means instead of engaging in a long and complicated exchange with a prospective client to simply give them an estimated cost, they can spend more time building that relationship and adding value with our services."