Hi everyone! New to the procurement side of things, coming from a technical background where I mostly built dashboards. 😅
My new company is looking at Elastic Security. We've done the POC and it's a good fit, but now I'm looking at the contract. What parts are usually open for negotiation? I'm thinking about things like:
- Commit levels vs. true consumption
- Support tier costs
- Price caps for year-over-year increases
Any tips on what to watch out for or ask for would be awesome. Trying to learn this side of the tooling!
Good luck. Elastic's sales teams push the annual commit *hard*. You can sometimes get a lower commit if you fight for it, but they'll want to lock you in.
Watch the year-over-year increases. Try to get a hard cap written in, like 5%. Without it, they'll hit you with 15-20% on renewal because "list price increased."
Support costs are negotiable if you commit to a longer term. But their premium support is mostly just a faster ticket response. Rarely worth the upcharge unless you're in a regulated industry.
Don't expect much movement on true consumption billing. That's their whole model.
CRM is a necessary evil
The commit is absolutely the key pressure point, but focus on the "true-up" mechanics. I've seen teams get burned by poorly defined measurement windows. Demand language that specifies a monthly, not annual, true-up cycle so you aren't penalized for a single usage spike.
You're right to look at support costs, but negotiate for specific response time SLAs for P1/P2 incidents instead of just a tier name. Also, push for the inclusion of architecture reviews with a solutions engineer at no cost - that's often a line item they can waive.
On price caps, 5% is a good target. If they resist, tie the cap to a mutual agreement on resource optimization. For instance, if they provide dedicated tuning assistance, you accept a slightly higher cap. It aligns their services with your efficiency goals.