Buying Czar Keep

An organization that brings in a Czar Keep holds one subscription. It covers the configured appliance: the hardware in the rack, the platform license for Substrate and Agency Studio, and sustainment for the term, in one line that is fixed for the term. There is no meter beside it, no separate support contract, and no second line that appears when the organization's people start using it.

One line for the configured appliance

Czar Keep is offered as a subscription for the configured appliance, and the configuration is what sets the line. The agreement describes the Keep: four or eight engines, standing alone or joined to a pool, with the routes and the services the organization has asked for. That description is what the organization pays for, for the term, and the line does not move within it. It is not a purchase, and it is not a lease. It is one line for a configured appliance that does the organization's work inside its walls, the same model under which a team holds a Czar and a facility holds a Grid.

What sustainment covers

Sustainment is the part of the line that keeps the Czar Keep what it was when it was commissioned. It covers signed update bundles for the Substrate services and the appliance itself, delivered by media or by the organization's own network and applied on the organization's schedule. It covers support through the customer portal and remote sessions the customer initiates. It covers attestation and provenance for the appliance, so the organization can show what is running and where it came from. It covers the hardware for the term. There is nothing in that list the organization has to buy again or renew separately while the term runs, and there is no software meter running beside the hardware. When the platform team asks what else it will need to budget for the Keep, the answer is the power and the rack space the room already provides.

What changes the configuration

Some things are a change to the configured appliance described in the agreement, and they are made deliberately. Going from four engines to eight in the same Czar Keep is one. A second Keep, in the same room or in another, is another. Joining the Keep to Czars in a Czar Grid pool, so that one record and one set of agents span the server room and a floor, is a third. Each of these changes what the appliance is, so each is a change to the agreement: the new configuration is described, and the line is set for it for the term. None of them is a surprise on an invoice. They are decisions the organization makes on purpose, in advance, with the people who run the room in the conversation.

What does not change the bill

Most of what happens to a Czar Keep after commissioning does not touch the line. More people using it does not; a hundred people becoming many more is the Keep being used as configured. More applications calling the models do not. More agents authored in Agency Studio, more records indexed by Retrieval, more adaptations, more evaluation runs, busier weeks and quieter ones: none of these moves the bill, because none of them changes the configured appliance. The record on the Keep shows the platform team how the machine is being used, and that visibility is for the organization's benefit. It is not a meter.

This matters for the same reason it matters on a floor. A metered bill turns every decision about the work into a decision about compute. A platform team that is charged by the request learns to ration the request, to postpone the adaptation, and to keep the next department off the machine until the budget cycle allows. A fixed line removes the incentive. The organization decides who uses the Keep on the merits of the work, and the people who own that work decide what the agents may do with it. Agents on a Czar Keep prepare and propose; a named person approves, and every step is on the record the organization holds. Where a Keep serves a floor, safety stays on the robot.

The customer portal

The subscription for a Czar Keep is held and seen in the customer portal. The organization's administrators see the agreement, the configured appliance, the term, and the invoices. They open tickets there, initiate remote sessions there, download the signed bundles and documents their entitlement covers, and invite the people in the organization who should have access. Nothing on the appliance connects to the portal. The portal is where the customer acts, and the Keep in the server room stays where it is, serving the organization's people.

Buying one is meant to be as plain as running one: a configured appliance in a rack, one line for the term, and no second thing to watch. The platform team budgets the Keep the way it budgets the room, as a cost of the building rather than a forecast of how much the organization will think this year.