A Flexible Billing Life Cycle for Cloud Services Using Augmented Customer Agreements

Abstract

Cloud computing constant evolution requires dynamic adjustments to service pricing and billing terms, considering provider infrastructures, customer requirements, and discount policies, among others. In this context, Customer Agreements (CA) are used to regulate the service provision including, among other information, the agreed service level in SLAs, pricing, and billing terms. Although many existing proposals and industrial tools support the definition of pricing and billing of cloud services, there is a lack in terms of customisation and automated monitoring tools integrated with the billing process. In this article, we provide a flexible billing proposal supporting CA that considers not only SLA terms but also customisable pricing and billing terms, possibly including compensations (i.e. discounts or overcharges) that apply when specified conditions are met. In addition, we developed an automated monitoring and analysis tool that we validate in a real-world industrial scenario. Moreover, we analyse and compare more than 50 existing industrial tools with our proposal, highlighting the advantages of its rule-based approach.