Companies that host financial transactions will have third-party fees such as transaction expenses and external data. Some companies use patented software to support their proprietary software. For example, leading public cloud infrastructure providers and ecommerce platforms, such as Heroku and Amazon Web Services, use Twilio’s SendGrid digital communication platform and this expense is considered direct. External data used in the software are direct if needed to provide the software with the full functionality as marketed to the consumer. Salesforce incorporates news feeds into it platform and pays a fee for this.