Pricing View

With Abiquo pricing, you can create pricing models to match service level agreements and assign them to your tenants and resellers. Customers can obtain estimates for their virtual appliances from the pricing system. Abiquo Accounting meters tenant resource usage and Abiquo billing enables you to charge customers for this usage based on pricing.

For each datacenter, you can set separate prices, and use different currencies, and you can set cost codes for VM image templates. Create your pricing models in Pricing view, after you create and assign any supporting currencies and cost codes. Abiquo controls pricing with scopes as well as privileges to enable reseller pricing.

Click the  icon to access Pricing view. The workflow to create a new pricing model is as follows:

1. Enter currencies
2. Create cost codes
3. Create the pricing model
4. Assign the model to an enterprise

Manage Currencies

To manage the currencies in the pricing system, go to the Currencies tab. The default currencies are euros, US dollars and Japanese yen. You may delete currencies but one currency must always remain in the system; this does not have to be a default currency. Click the header line to sort the currencies by ascending or descending order of the currency code or currency name. 

Add a New Currency

Open the currency tab and click the + Add button to add a new currency.

Delete or Edit a Currency

Before you delete a currency, check that it is not in use in any pricing models, because you cannot delete a currency that is in use.

To delete or edit a currency, first select the currency. Then click the edit or delete button.

Manage Cost Codes

Abiquo uses cost codes for pricing and accounting of VM templates.

To implement image pricing:

1. Before you create a pricing model, on the Cost Codes tab, create cost codes
2. In the Apps library, edit your VM templates and assign cost codes (one per template). See Modify a VM Template
3. On the Pricing models tab, enter image prices per cost code

The pricing in the estimate will include the cost of the image when users in enterprises with a pricing model assigned deploy a VM using a template with a cost code.

To add a cost code, open the Cost Code tab and click the + Add button. Then complete the dialog as described here.

Cost Codes General Information

Cost Codes Default Prices

Set the default prices for a VM template in all of your currencies. You can later change these prices in a specific pricing model on the Image Prices tab.

Manage Pricing Models

On the Pricing models tab, you can create pricing models by entering prices for the VM elements. You can clone an existing pricing model to create a new one.  Abiquo controls access to pricing models with scopes as well as privileges:

• When you create a pricing model, Abiquo automatically assigns the same scope as your user role
  
  • The Abiquo UI does not display the scope of the pricing model
• Users with pricing privileges can always display the pricing model of their own enterprise
  
  • Administrators who can switch to another enterprise can display the current pricing model of the enterprise, even if the pricing model has a greater scope
• To display or manage the pricing model of another enterprise in Pricing view, you must have the same scope as the creator of the pricing model

Before creating the pricing model:

• To use a currency that is not one of the defaults (US dollars, euros, Japanese yen), add the currency on the Pricing View#Currencies Tab.
• To use cost codes for VM templates, first create a cost code on the Pricing View#Cost Codes Tab, and when convenient, assign it to the image in Apps library view.

To clone a pricing model, click the  clone button. The platform will call the new model "PricingModelName (c)"

To create a new pricing model, click the + Add button.

Pricing Models General Information

Complete this tab first if you have all the information. You must enter all the required fields on this tab and the other tabs before you save the pricing model. 

Pricing Estimate Message

When the enterprise has a pricing model, Abiquo will display pricing estimates.

•  At any time users can click the Estimate button in the virtual appliance view to display a current pricing estimate for a VM. If the user does not have pricing privileges, the platform will display the default '$' dollar symbol or the symbol configured in branding. Or if the user has privileges to retrieve the tenant's pricing model, the platform will display the currency code.

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• Users with access to the Abiquo API can also request a pricing estimate via the API.
• To automatically display a pricing estimate popup when the user deploys a virtual appliance or VM, the administrator can select the checkbox to "Show charges before deployment".

The default message is: "The charge for this Virtual Appliance will be %CHARGE_FORMATTED% per %CHARGEPERIOD%, charged per %MINPERIOD%, subject to a minimum charge of %MINCHARGE_FORMATTED%. VMs in this Virtual Appliance will be: %VM_PRICES%. Resources defined in the Virtual Datacenter total %VDC_TOTAL_CHARGE% per %CHARGEPERIOD%: %VDC_PRICES%"

The virtual appliance and VM pricing estimates only include the costs that are directly related to VMs. The virtual datacenters resources estimate includes other costs such as the VLAN cost, and the cost of datastore disks without a datastore tier, such as a cloud-init ISO. The VDC resources cost also includes public IP addresses because they are billed for the time of reservation, which may be longer than the time they are attached to a VM.

To customize the pricing estimate message, edit the message, change the text and use the standard cut and paste keys to change the location of the variables. You can also select variables to add to this message from the pull-down list. Align the message with your acocunting system.

Resource prices per location

You can set pricing models per private cloud datacenter or public cloud region. When you create the first pricing model for a locaton in a currency and assign it to your tenant, Abiquo will use the prices as the base prices for the datacenter. When you create a new pricing model, Abiquo will copy the base prices for each pricing element and modify the prices by the percentage you enter. Then if you enter a price that is lower than the base price, it will be marked in red or marked with a warning symbol.

Prices

This tab displays all the elements in a datacenter (with separate tabs for datastore and storage tiers) or public cloud region. The default for each field is the price set for the enterprise's existing pricing model in this datacenter with your percentage increment applied. 

Datastore tiers

In a private cloud datacenter, datastore tiers set service levels for storage, so different datastores can be assigned to different tiers. You can manage datastore tiers in Infrastructure view (See Manage Datastore Service Levels with Datastore Tiers). 

Persistent storage

In a private cloud datacenter, persistent storage tiers set service levels for storage, so different storage devices can be assigned to different tiers. You can edit the storage tier details in the  Datacenter Storage tab. 

Hardware profiles

In public cloud and in private cloud datacenters where hardware profiles are enabled, users can work with hardware profiles to select the appropriate combinations of CPU and RAM for their VMs. You can edit hardware profiles in Infrastructure view on the Hardware profiles tab.

Cost Code Prices

This tab displays all of the images as set in the main cost code tab, with their current price. See the Manage Cost Codes section above.

Manage Enterprise Associations

In the Enterprise Associations tab you can associate a pricing model with each enterprise. This tab displays a list of pricing models and two panes of enterprises. The default display is all pricing models and all enterprises.

Click on a pricing model to display the enterprises with this pricing model assigned in the left pane and the enterprises without it in the right pane.

• To assign a new pricing model to an enterprise: Select a pricing model from the pull-down list next to an enterprise name to assign the current pricing model to this enterprise.
• To remove a pricing model from an enterprise: Select a new pricing model from the pull-down list next to an enterprise to replace this pricing model OR select "None" to remove this pricing model from an enterprise without replacing it. The enterprise will now move from the left enterprise pane to the right enterprise pane for this pricing model.

You can also assign or remove a pricing model from an enterprise when you create or edit the enterprise. See Manage Enterprises

Reseller pricing

Abiquo supports reseller pricing with pricing scope and default base prices per datacenter.

The first step for a provider to implement reseller pricing is to create a pricing model and assign it to each reseller.. When the reseller first opens the Pricing view, they will see the pricing model that you created. This pricing model should contain the base prices that they will pay for virtual resources. They can then create customer pricing models using this pricing model as the base.

Remember that all users with pricing privileges can view the pricing model assigned to their own tenant. But to administer a pricing model, the user must have the same scope as the user that created the pricing model. 

When a reseller creates a pricing model for their customers, Abiquo will use the base prices from the reseller's pricing model, and then the reseller can enter a percentage to increase or decrease the base prices.

For resource prices, Abiquo loads the existing prices and then applies the percentage change (adding the percentage of the base price they entered to the base price). They can accept the new prices or manually enter a new price for any resource. If they enter a price that is lower than the base price, Abiquo will highlight the price with red text.