Pay Once Pricing Model From FalconStor

FalconStor Software Inc. announced a pricing model for its FreeStor platform that aims to disrupt global storage industry pricing practices and deliver far long-term customer value.

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The ‘Pay Once’ pricing model, now part of its capacity-based subscription pricing, means users of the heterogeneous software-defined storage platform need only pay for the primary copy of their data – not second, third, or more copies. Customers will no longer incur extra expense when migrating, backing up, and optimising data, further helping eliminate unpredictable capacity expansion costs often associated with traditional storage platforms.

“By introducing a predictable subscription based pricing model where customers pay only once for the primary copy of data, the aim is to drag industry pricing practices into the modern IT world,” said Gary Quinn, CEO, FalconStor. “I would like to see every storage vendor adopt this policy, because current pricing models are no longer sustainable. Businesses are forced to pay more than they should, either because they over-specify their requirements, or they pay for multiple licenses to use a product they already own – or simply because they’re being taken advantage of by the vendor.“

Company’s transparent approach to pricing is designed to replace outdated models where escalating software costs are tied to the hardware refreshes needed over time. The firm will offer its software-defined storage platform with a single price; customers pay for only one license for all existing and future use of the product, including copies needed to migrate or to manage DR, backup or analytics. This pricing is offered irrespective of how much storage capacity the customer manages or any upgrades they make to their hardware infrastructure.

“In the past, with the old-style storage systems we had, the problem was always with the software costs,” said Sandor Orban, technical lead, infrastructure services, Sunrise Communications AG, a private telecommunication provider in Switzerland. “At the end of a lifecycle, we had to pretty much dump licenses and rebuy them every time we had a refresh. With FalconStor we only pay for what we actually use, saving us a lot of money.“

Brian Meredith, MD, Blue Chip Group, a cloud and managed hosting company, said: “To protect our customers, we always have three online copies of their data. This is only possible because with FalconStor, we only have to pay for the primary copy. There are no fees for the second, third or more copies“

The traditional lack of price transparency in the storage industry prevents many users from calculating and securing a fair deal for their storage needs. As a result, many businesses pay too much for their storage. Customers often have to guess what they need and ultimately over-specify their requirements or pay for multiple licenses to use a product they already own in different applications or environments.

“The storage industry needs to take a serious look at its increasingly outdated pricing models, which are not designed for the new digital enterprise,” said Roy Illsley, principal analyst, Ovum. “FalconStor has designed a new pricing model that is focused on the long term value the customers are getting from their storage investments.“

“When looking at storage pricing across the board, customers are losing out. In many cases they don’t really know what a fair price for storage is, and as a result pay more than they should,” explained Gary Quinn, CEO, FalconStor. “By making clear to our customers that there will be no 2^nd and 3^rd copy costs and that we will only charge them for exactly what they are using in primary production data under management. We are not only saving them money, but also giving them the insight and clarity to plan for their future storage needs.“