Pricing Models for Cloud Computing Services, a Survey

Abstract

Recently, citizens and companies can access utility computing services by using Cloud Computing. These services such as infrastructures, platforms and applications could be accessed on-demand whenever it is needed. In Cloud Computing, different types of resources would be required to provide services, but the demands such as requests rates and user's requirements of these services and the cost of the required resources are continuously varying. Therefore, Service Level Agreements would be needed to guarantee the service's prices and the offered Quality of Services which are always dependable and interrelated to guarantee revenues maximization for cloud providers as well as improve customers' satisfaction level. Cloud consumers are always searching for a cloud provider who provides good service with the least price, so Cloud provider should use advanced technologies and frameworks to increase QoS, and decrease cost. This paper provides a survey on cloud pricing models and analyzes the recent and relevant research in this field.