Data Centers

Data centers have traditionally been recurring billers that required their customers to select from a menu of tiered services that required upfront subscription commitments. Virtualization, software-defined-networking, and related cloud computing technologies have increasingly tilted the balance towards dynamic providers offering platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) and infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS). These services could scale on demand and charge accordingly the utility model with usage-based, metered billing. However, unlike a traditional utility that offered a single product, data centers have a large number of services and need a complex product pricing catalog for merchandising.

Capabilities of interest for data center providers include:

Revenue Management

Manage a large number of subscription services with varying add-on options, bundled plans, pre-paid/post-paid plans, etc.
Easily implement pricing strategies based on consumption such as metered billing, tiered pricing, peak usage pricing, etc.
Increase customer acquisition with online self-signup activate billing as soon as services are provisioned
Offer plan upgrades and cross-sell
Hierarchical billing (master billing) enables multiple accounts to be rolled up into a single invoice for bill-presentment or payment
Maintain enterprise accounts with traditional invoicing and paper checks/ACH payments
Track and manage commissions across a reseller or affiliate channel
Affordably customize to your advanced requirements

Customer Retention

Intelligent, branded customer messaging for a variety of conditions avoid bill shock, service interruptions for non-payment, etc. with timely and automated customer communication
Customer self-service portal embedded into your website minimize routine billing enquiries and disputes with clear presentation of detailed usage charges
Auto-updater to get replacement credit cards for expired and cancelled cards
Free trail periods, and promotional offers
Intelligent payment recycling strategies for managing declined payments

Integration

Self-service portals that can be embedded into your website
Custom distributed agents to collect raw usage data for metered billing, including SNMP, log files, or databases
Outbound event notifications (push notifications) to enable your systems to automatically react to billing events (e.g. add new services, or de-provision delinquent accounts)
Full-featured, modern REST API makes integration a snap
Import/export to ERP / accounting systems