Settlement and capacity planning in multi-service provider infrastructures

Service providers are increasingly turning to federated approaches to meet customer demand while limiting the risk of large-scale computing infrastructure investments. In such models, service providers could meet the demands of peak processing periods or specialized application environments by offloading to a partner provider. While a number of distributed systems initiatives, including Grid computing, rely on such cooperatives, models for effective capacity planning and settlement in such environments has largely been ignored. In this paper, we develop a model for settlement and capacity planning in a multi-provider computing cooperative. We introduce two pricing tariffs - linear and burstable pricing - that are commonly used in the industry, and compare their relative merits.