Real-time rating and charging in federated cloud environments

This article presents a concept to integrate real-time rating and charging functionality into a federated cloud environment. It is part of the work in the ITEA2 EASI-CLOUDS project that aims at advancing cloud computing in Europe, Egypt and Korea with the main objective to provide a federated cloud computing infrastructure with enhanced reliability, elasticity, security and ease-of-use characteristics at all levels. The article examines already existing standards for Web Services-based rating, charging, account management and user management and illustrates the need for real-time rating and charging to enhance transparency for payments. Based on a brief overview about the general possibilities how to address rating, charging and billing in federated clouds, the chosen `adjunct rating and charging´ approach and the main functions that have to be realized in this context are described.