IT and Finance
A few users have sent in questions about our import / export capabilities. I want to make sure that everyone understands we have a configurable scheduler, so the billing data can be exported on a set time (daily/weekly/monthly) and can be integrated by other systems on this same schedule.
We think this can help ease the burden of IT providing the data Finance needs in the format / timetable / delivery mechanism they request. Since we can export into XML, CSV, PDF or Word formats, there should be something for everyone here – whether the exec just needs to add it to their Excel model, print and email around a PDF/Word doc or actually feed it into another system (via XML), the data certainly does not need to be “read” from our Reporting front-end. Although it’s nice to have Web-based reports that are viewable from a secure portal too.
On a similar note, several organizations using the beta version really like how administrators of our system can set a surcharge for the allocation of extra resources to a VM. For instance, a VM with 2 or 4 virtual CPUs can incur a percentage uplift for that; this is desirable because the performance of all other virtual machines on the same hardware will be degraded, so they want to charge a premium and discourage it. We call the above a ‘tiered model with thresholds’.
We’d like to this VAlign requires minimal administration time – especially with our ability to do bulk, automated assigning of rate policies and consumer mapping through the Client GUI. Please email me directly at bronagh at valignsoftware dot com if you’ve got some other requests to simplify the initial pricing, mapping and ongoing admin of the cost modeling.
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