Two cost curves
Two cost drivers shape the infrastructure bill of an education platform, and they behave differently.
Storage and delivery scale with the gigabytes stored and the gigabytes delivered. Object storage without egress fees, fronted by a content delivery network (CDN), keeps delivery cost close to storage cost, so the monthly figure per tenant is small and predictable. It can be absorbed into a subscription.
Live video scales with connected time. Real-time video providers typically bill per participant-minute, so the cost of a class is the number of participants, multiplied by the duration, multiplied by the unit rate.
The table below uses an assumed rate of $4 per thousand participant-minutes. It is an illustration of the arithmetic, not a quotation from any provider.
| Class | Participant-minutes | Cost at the assumed rate |
|---|---|---|
| One-to-one, one hour | 120 | $0.48 |
| Group of 20, one hour | 1,200 | $4.80 |
| Forty such group classes in a month | 48,000 | $192 |
Whatever the actual rate, the shape is the same: cost grows with every additional participant and every additional minute. A flat subscription that bundles video without a meter turns the most active tenants into the least profitable ones.
Implications for pricing
- Meter what scales with participant time. Usage is recorded per tenant, reported back to the tenant, and limited by a ceiling per day or per period, with alerts before the ceiling is reached. Behaviour beyond the ceiling is defined in advance.
- Keep recordings on the cheap curve. Recordings are written to object storage and played through the CDN, so replaying a class costs a fraction of running it.
- Set a retention policy for recordings. They accumulate indefinitely unless retention is defined. Lifecycle rules that move older recordings to a colder storage class, or remove them after an agreed term, keep storage growth predictable.
- Price interactive and broadcast separately. A webinar for hundreds and a tutorial for a dozen are different products with different unit costs, and they should not share a price.
- Absorb what is cheap and predictable. Storage and delivery can sit inside the subscription, with a fair-use limit.
Measuring cost per tenant
The economics are only visible when usage is attributed. Each video session, recording and gigabyte is tagged with its tenant, so that the platform can report cost and margin per tenant per month, list the tenants that account for most of the video minutes, and alert when a tenant passes a set share of its ceiling. Reviewed monthly, these figures show which plans need repricing before the loss appears in the accounts.
Provider selection as a cost decision
Provider selection affects cost beyond the rate card. A provider without a region near most learners can produce latency and quality problems that cost more in lost sessions and support than the price difference saves. Broadcast-only services and interactive services should be evaluated separately, because their unit costs and limits differ; selecting a video provider for live classes sets out the criteria for each format. Retiring a provider that fails on regional coverage is a cost decision as much as a technical one.
Rule of thumb
Before a capability is bundled into a subscription, its cost curve should be established. What scales per participant-minute needs a meter and a ceiling. What scales per gigabyte-month can usually be absorbed.
Jversity meters live-video usage per institute against a daily ceiling, and serves recordings from object storage through a CDN.