The last and 5th characteristic of cloud computing is Metered Services. Metered Services allows instant transparency into usage of resources. This allows the flexibility for the provider to offer pay-as-you-use pricing models vs a flat fee, subscription model.
In the enterprise SaaS application world, such as ERP and HCM, you don’t see this characteristic being deployed, however you will see this in the IaaS and PaaS worlds. In the SaaS application world, pricing is based on number of users.
Examples of metered services being used are:
- Music and Video downloads. Music apps such as Pandora and Spotify have the free offering, then a flat-fee offering and then a pay-as-you-use offering. It is because of the metered service capability that they can provide this flexibility to its customers.
- Website hosting. Database use and data storage can be charged on a pay-per-use basis.
- Utility companies. As utility companies move more and more towards SMART technology, the demand for data storage and analysis is growing exponentially for them. Metered Services can help them manage this growth and minimize the costs of cloud computing.
Metered Services gives you instant feedback and transparency in terms of your usage. You can now make immediate, more intelligent business decisions in regards to your infrastructure needs.