Fixing the Pricing of Infrastructure as a Service
Infrastructure as a Service or IaaS is a platform that is based in the cloud and provides storage, computing, and networking plans on demand. Payment is on a pay-as-you-go model and users have to pay only for the quantum of resources. This in turn leads to substantial savings as no flat fees are charged as in traditional database systems. Thus, the Infrastructure as a Service pricing model is always a cost-effective proposition.
Several factors have to be taken into
account before cloud service providers can arrive at the precise Infrastructure
as a Service pricing. The pricing is based on what the providers are paying
to established cloud providers for storage and computing facilities and at what
prices the same services are being sold to their customers. The difference
between the two represents the profits made by the cloud provider.
Now, how do
cloud providers estimate the costs of services offered to their clients? The
first step is to calculate as precisely as possible the COGS (Cost of
Goods Sold) that is, every expense that is linked to the delivery of the IaaS
services. These include the cost of utilities on which the IaaS offering will
be built, the development cost of the IaaS, and the costs of labor for
supporting the IaaS offering. This half of estimating the Infrastructure as
a Service pricing is related to the cost of offering services by the cloud
provider.
The other half
is what should be charged to the customer. For this, market research is
conducted to understand what the competitors are charging from clients. Care
must be taken here not to overprice services to stay in the race.
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