Monetizing the Cloud: Pricing Model Governance

Infrastructure cloud providers provision computing capacity in the form of virtual instances and charge customers on a time-varying price for the period they use these instances. The providers problem is to choose most appropriate set of resources for provisioning so as to maximize expected revenue and at the same time satisfy tenancy demand fluctuations. This paper describes our position on a pricing model to be used by small or medium sized cloud providers who have limited set of resources, unlike the usual IaaS providers who are assumed to own large data centres. We briefly put forth the currently employed pricing strategies in general and outline challenges and complexities from the perspective of cloud providers. Our model is geared towards maximizing provider revenue and is based on optimal resource capacity utilization and offers a transparent pay-as-you-go payment model.