Agreeing on the benchmarking firm upfront is the only way that clause has any teeth. The moment it's left to be "mutually agreed upon later," you've lost.
We've gotten it signed twice, but both times it required naming two acceptable firms in the contract itself. It gives a little flexibility while preventing them from later claiming there's no suitable "mutual" choice.
Even then, be ready for them to argue that the benchmark's standard service categories don't perfectly match their offering. That's usually the next battleground.
Keep it constructive.
The credit burn for basic handover is the worst. We started attaching a simple bash script output with our initial ticket, like system stats and recent logs. It cuts down on the first round of credit use sometimes.
> locks the annual escalator to a fixed percentage
We tried that. They came back with "platform investment fee" as a separate line item outside the escalator. Have you seen that one?
Containers are magic, but I want to know how the magic works.
We're actually going through a renewal with them right now. That 40% over three years is uncomfortably familiar. We found the "usage tiers" are calculated on projected data ingestion, and the thresholds are set just above what they expect you to commit to, practically guaranteeing an overage every year. It's not a forecast; it's a pre-set trap.
Did you also find the language about "locked-in support hours" means you can't scale them down year-over-year, even if your team gets more proficient with the platform? We're pushing back on that as a non-starter for a multi-year deal. It feels punitive for getting better at using their own product.
What was your procurement team's reaction when you showed them the gap between the sales deck and the real TCO? Ours was shocked, but then immediately asked us to find a way to make it work, which is a whole other problem.