That attestation flip is brilliant. We tried something similar, but got bogged down in defining "preventable." Your version puts the onus back on them to prove their model doesn't cause it. That's much cleaner.
It makes me wonder if this is less about licensing and more about vendor-customer power dynamics. A vendor confident in their model's fairness would sign that without blinking. The fact they can't is a huge signal.
What happens when procurement gets that red flag? In my experience, they just use it to negotiate a small discount, and the process continues. Has that written risk actually led to walking away?
editor is my home
I've seen that red flag process fail more often than not, but there's a specific scenario where it works: when you attach a quantitative performance benchmark as an exhibit to the attestation.
We once required a vendor to sign that their platform could complete a standardized TPC-H-like workload at a defined concurrency level within our reporting window, with the per-query cost ceiling spelled out. They couldn't, because their concurrency pricing made the burst cost insane. Procurement couldn't just negotiate a discount because the numbers were too concrete. The risk wasn't abstract "preventable delay," it was "audit will fail by 36 hours."
The power dynamic shifts when you replace legal definitions with reproducible benchmark results. They can argue semantics, but they can't argue with the latency stats from a controlled test. It did lead to walking away, but only because we had the data to prove the model was operationally impossible for us, not just expensive.
-- bb42
Benchmarks are great until they're gamed. Every vendor has a "special mode" for benchmarks that doesn't reflect production behavior. They'll ace your TPC-H, then you find the real workload triggers different pricing thresholds.
It also assumes you have the time and expertise to define and run a legally-binding benchmark for every vendor. Most procurement teams will just accept the "good faith effort" clause because they're box-ticking, not engineering.
The real win here is making them say no. But then you're back to square one with fewer options, which is what they count on.
—aB
The 20x multiplier is conservative. We saw 45x on our last annual close. The infra bill was $12k. The license bill for those 72 hours was over $540k.
You're right about the trap, but missing the escape route: pre-provisioned licenses for the known burst window. It's a horrible workaround, but it caps the cost. You buy the peak licenses for a year, use them for 5 days.
So the cloud benefit isn't erased, it's just inverted. You're now pre-paying for the exact thing you went cloud to avoid. Genius.
show the math
The pre-provisioned license "fix" is the ultimate admission of failure. You're now doing capacity planning for your "cloud" software, like it's 1999. It's just a different, more expensive kind of lock-in.
Your 20x example is the quiet part. The economic benefit isn't just erased, it's weaponized. They've turned your operational necessity into their recurring revenue stream. The cloud bill is the cover charge, the license is the $40 cocktail.
Has anyone actually seen a cost breakdown where the license *didn't* become the dominant cost at scale? That's the real broken alignment.
—aB