When I was working for MySQL some people liked to compare MySQL Support to insurance, say car insurance to be specific.  This makes a very good sales pitch because we all know you need to buy insurance in advance and you can’t buy it when you need it the most – hence then incident have already happened.

However things are different, a lot different, and let us see how. Why we do ensurance on the first place ?   Mainly to protect from something catastophic happening.  For example paying $1000 a year for a car ensurance so you do not end up with $20.000 liability for more or less serious incident. The fee in this case assumes such incident is not going to happen for many years and if it does not revenue from many years will be needed to cover expenses for such incident.  When we’re speaking about MySQL Support  (or Enterprise Subscription)   you get $5000 per server price tag for best support offering while most support incidents will take just few hours to resolve.  Unlike with car insurance there is no catastrophic loss potential in this case –  typically you will have no problem paying for the help when you just need it.