PsiStorm
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Posted - 2008.10.22 09:02:00 -
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I work for a development company, it's not as big as CCP in terms of employees but we are close to par as far as revenue goes. We run much the same model as CCP, we have a server farm comprising many blade servers and we too run 2 RAMSAN DB Servers. We host our clients databases on our servers and we develop most of our software systems in house.
One of our systems is a very advanced auditing system which allows clients to audit their assets (tables, chairs, aircons, vehicles, etc) on a periodic basis. Some of our clients make use of our servers 24/7 while others make use of our auditing systems once in 3 months and some as little as once in 6 months.
When clients cancel their "subs" their db's go into stasis. The ONLY thing we do is lock the ability to log into the systems. We allow their backups to run, their automated procedures, their mailing systems, their intervaces etc. All these things take up a % of the resources from the servers. We once had a meeting as to whether we should detach the db's whenever the subs weren't being paid and the common concensus was? NO. Why? because in our case, 100% of our dormant clients reactivated their accounts each time they needed to do an audit and some even went on to purchase more modules and become 24/7 subscribers.
what's this got to do with EVE? EVERYTHING. Our servers are working whether the clients db is active or dormant. We're chewing resources and we constantly add more hardware even when clients are dormant. WHY? BECAUSE IT'S GOOD BUSINESS PRACTICE! Not only that, but in light of the recent challenges facting the world, we sent out a letter to each client stating that we have frozen our pricing for the next twelve months to ensure that clients didn't receive anymore bad news in light of everything else going up. Why would we be so stupid? Simple, a). We make more money than we're spending, b). we're not greedy, c). we actually care.
Now what are the results of our business practices compared to CCP's? Well, CCP is loosing clients and we've just signed on two new corporate clients as a direct result of our practice. Word of mouth is such a powerful thing.
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