Remember the early discussions about how cloud computing billing would be handled in exactly the same way as the big utilities—on a metered basis?
One of the most attractive features of cloud computing as a concept is the ability to pay for only what is used and to have access to the resources on an on-demand basis. While the concepts surrounding this have invoked the metered utility billing system, very few companies have provided this option. For one thing, billing for cloud computing is already a complex task for cloud service providers on a per-core, per-node, or in the case of Amazon, a per instance billing cycle. When you throw in the complexities of metering usage, just as electricity companies do, the process becomes more complicated, especially on a large scale.
Tomorrow morning, Nimsoft, a division of CA Technologies, will be announcing a truly metered service for cloud billing—which marks among one of the first times a fairly major player in the industry is delivering on the promise of metered billing, thus further refining the pay-per-use model. In the opinion of CA’s Nimsoft business unit leader, Gary Read, this will be the future of cloud computing billing, a compelling point that research group IDC supports.
According to the early reports on the possibility of someone leading the way for metered use-based billing, Nimsoft will flip the switch and give this concept life at the end of July.