What shape the work takes.

AT RENEWAL

Coming off a per-seat licence

The bill went up again and the usage did not, or the contract renews in March and somebody has asked what else there is. The seat count has grown faster than the revenue, and what is being paid for is presence rather than use.

We read the estate first and put the three-year cost both ways, with the labour counted on both sides. If moving wins, people move in groups with the old system still running, so the switch is a fade rather than a cutover and the old contract is cancelled with notice rather than in a hurry.

Starts with

An assessment: from 3 days at 110 EUR an hour

Then

Setup 590 EUR once, and from 39 EUR a month on your own hardware or 69 EUR on ours

Never

A charge per person. No VAT is added to any of it

• What you run today, what it costs once the labour is counted, and when each tie next comes up
• A staged route with a pilot group and a rollback at every stage, with the awkward stage named rather than buried
• Priced by deployment and never per user, so growing is not a reason to move off again

We would turn it down where the deadline is next month. Migration takes longer than installation and rushing it is how people stop trusting the whole idea: renew once more, move deliberately, cancel with notice.

AN INHERITED ESTATE

Taking over something somebody built and left

It works, whoever built it has gone, and nobody left knows how it was built, whether it is patched, or what happens if it stops.

We read it and tell you what you have, in writing. That is a bounded piece of work with a price agreed before it starts, and it is deliberately separate from any decision about who runs the thing afterwards, including us. The decision at the end is yours: keep it, rebuild it with the data carried across, or stand it down and move the people.

The read

Engineering at 110 EUR an hour, scoped and priced first

If we then run it

From 39 EUR a month on your hardware or 69 EUR on ours, setup 590 EUR once

Standard support

Included: 2 requests in 30 days, answered within 2 working days, and anything past the allowance at 110 EUR an hour

Priority support

199 EUR a month: 4 requests in 30 days, answered within 8 working hours. Working hours only, and there is no rota

• What is deployed, what version, and what is already past end of life
• What is exposed to the internet that should not be, and whether a restore has ever actually been run
• What is undocumented, and what only ever worked because of a hand edit

We will not promise to keep it before we have read it, and we will not certify that it is safe. A report says what we found and what we could not see. Sometimes the honest answer is to stand it down, and that goes in the report rather than after the contract.

ONE SYSTEM

Standing one thing up beside what you already run

Nothing about this requires replacing everything. Usually one thing hurts: the file store, the meetings, the chat, the password list that ended up in a shared folder. The rest is working and should be left alone.

So we stand up that one system on a machine you name, behind your own domain, pointed at the directory you already have where there is one. What we would leave exactly where it is, and why, is part of what gets written down.

The machine

From 39 EUR a month on your own hardware, 69 EUR on ours

Setup

590 EUR once, invoiced before the work starts

Each bridge, bot or extra service

10 EUR each a month, up to 24

• One system, versioned configuration, and a staging copy so the first upgrade is rehearsed rather than discovered
• Sign-in against your existing directory, so it is not a second password for everyone
• Runbooks and a named owner, because you should be able to replace us

We would turn it down where the work genuinely depends on a feature only one proprietary product has: keep that product and move what surrounds it. And where nobody on your side is going to own the thing once it runs, because that is the failure that is never technical.

A CLOSED NETWORK

Where nothing may leave the building

Some estates have no outbound access, or have it only through a gate somebody signs for. An installation that assumes it can reach the internet does not work there, and neither does an update that arrives by itself.

Isolated deployment is a normal configuration for the open systems we work on rather than an exception, which is one of the reasons the work is done on them. Installation runs from offline artefact bundles against a private mirror, the configuration is held as files that can be rebuilt, and where two networks have to exchange anything the transfer is designed as a one-way crossing rather than left to a shared folder.

The machine

Yours, inside the network: 39 EUR a month

Setup

590 EUR once

Bundles and upgrades

Engineering at 110 EUR an hour, planned in advance rather than continuous

• Air-gapped and offline installation for networks with no outbound access
• Offline artefact bundles and private mirrors, and cross-domain or one-way transfer designs for segmented networks
• Monitoring and alerting that stay inside the network, because nothing can leave it to reach a hosted dashboard

The limit is plain and it is not ours to remove: we cannot see a machine we cannot reach. Someone inside has to be able to run a command and read a screen back to us, and no support arrangement changes that. Not every system we would otherwise recommend has an offline install path, so which ones can go inside is settled before anything is agreed. We will not build a quiet way out of a network that was closed on purpose.

A BRIDGE

Reaching people who are not moving

Part of the organisation, or a supplier, or a whole set of customers, stays where it is. A bridge connects the people who are not moving and buys time for the people who are, which is often what makes a staged migration possible at all.

Each bridge is a component. It has to be run, watched and occasionally repaired, so none is switched on by default and which ones a deployment gets is your choice. Identity is mapped so a bridged message carries the right author, and how the bridge is retired, with what happens to the data at shutdown, is decided when it goes in.

Each bridge

10 EUR each a month, up to 24

Design and build

Engineering at 110 EUR an hour where it is bespoke

• Bridge architecture: which networks, and what the room model on our side should be
• Bridges to the common messaging networks and to email, and bespoke ones to in-house systems
• Monitoring, retirement and data handling at shutdown, written down before the first message crosses

What is not included is control over the far side: a bridge lives and dies by the other network's API and its terms of service, and neither is ours to promise. We would turn it down where the bridge is the whole plan. It buys time to decide, it is not the decision.

A READING

An assessment that ends in do not do this

Sometimes the question is whether to move at all and the useful answer is no. That is a real outcome here rather than a polite one: the recommendation says stay where you are, the reasoning is written out so somebody who was not in the room can check it, and the invoice is the same as it would have been the other way.

An assessment is deliberately small and fixed. It has to be cheap enough to commission before anyone is committed to an outcome, or it stops being an assessment and becomes a proposal.

What it costs

From 3 days at 110 EUR an hour. No VAT is added: we are not registered for it, so the figure shown is the whole figure.

What it does not buy

A commitment from either side to do anything afterwards

• Every system in daily use, what it costs, and where the data physically sits in fact rather than in the contract
• Which obligations actually apply to you, separated from the ones assumed because a competitor mentions them
• Three-year cost both ways with the labour counted, a risk register in the order the risks would bite, and the parts we would leave alone

What we will not write is an assessment shaped by what we would be paid to build next. If every reading we ever produced recommended buying something from us, none of them would be worth commissioning.

WHATEVER THE SHAPE

What is agreed in time

None of the six above changes any of this. These are the periods the contract binds both sides to, whichever shape the work arrives in, and each one names the clause it comes from so it can be read in full before anything is signed.

Before anything starts

An order becomes a contract when we confirm it in writing, and anything said before that is an estimate. Setup begins once the first invoice is paid and you have provided what the deployment needs: a domain, access to the machine where it is yours, and any directory we are asked to join. Clause 4.

A support request, standard

2 in 30 days, answered within 2 working days, included with the machine. Working hours, Monday to Friday, excluding public holidays: a request sent on Friday evening is answered on the next working day.

A support request, priority

4 in 30 days, answered within 8 working hours, at 199 EUR a month. The same working hours. Anything past either allowance is charged at 110 EUR an hour.

An invoice

Payable within 14 days. Setup once before the work begins, maintenance monthly in advance, and work outside the agreed scope quoted before it starts and invoiced when it is done. Clause 5.

A price change

At least 30 days before it applies to you, and never to a month already invoiced. Clause 5.

A change to these documents

At least 30 days before a material change applies, and you may end the contract before it takes effect. The date a version came into force is printed on the document, with every earlier date listed under it. Clause 14.

Notice to stop

1 month in writing, either way. No reason is required and there is no exit fee of any kind. Clause 13.

A breach

Either side may end it at once where the other commits a material breach and has not fixed it within 14 days of being told. Clause 13.

Your data after you stop

Personal data we hold for you as processor is deleted within 30 days of termination, sooner if you ask, unless the law requires us to keep it. Clause 13.

Cancelling as a consumer

Where you ordered as an individual rather than as an organisation, 14 days from the day the contract is made, and the refund within 14 days of your telling us, less the value of any work you asked us to begin inside the window. Clauses 4 and 5a.

Start and delivery dates are agreed in the written scope before the first invoice. Support is counted in working hours under clause 6 of the terms.

WHATEVER THE SHAPE

If it does not suit

Every shape above ends with what would make us turn it down. This is the other direction: what happens when you turn us down, or when the work is not what was agreed.

If the answer is not to proceed

An assessment that ends in stay where you are is a finished piece of work, and the invoice is the same as one that ends in a build. That is the outcome we are paid for rather than the outcome we prefer, and it is why the assessment is priced small enough to commission before anyone is committed.

If the work is not what was agreed

Where you ordered as a consumer the Consumer Rights Act 2015 requires it to be carried out with reasonable care and skill and lets you require the work to be done again, or the price reduced; no contract can take that away and clause 5a says so. Where you ordered as an organisation, clause 12 limits our total liability in any twelve-month period to what you paid us in it, and nothing above that figure is promised.

If you want to leave

1 month's notice, either way, and the act of leaving costs nothing. You get the deployment as it stands — database, file store and configuration — rather than a farewell export, and access is withdrawn on request. Handover work is charged at 110 EUR an hour; leaving is not. Clause 13, and the leaving page in full.

If we would be the wrong supplier

Where a mainstream hosted product already does the job, nobody on your side will own the result, or the deciding factor is the lowest price this quarter, we would decline the work. We would rather lose it than find out in month three.

If something is broken

An outage is counted and never charged, on either support level. There is no availability promise behind that and clause 7 says so: what is promised is how quickly we answer, not that nothing will fail.

Every line above is in the terms of service, the data processing agreement or the leaving page, all three published in full before anyone is asked to sign anything. Where one of them changes it changes there first and here second, and the date it took effect is printed on the document.