Service usage metering in hybrid cloud environments

Abstract

With the proliferation of cloud based services - IaaS, PaaS, and SaaS - enterprises are increasingly consuming all type of IT services delivered by cloud providers. These cloud services are increasingly being used to create integrated solutions where some of the component services are delivered from on-premise private cloud environments and the remaining are provided by off-premise providers. While this best-of-breed approach results in flexible and agile business solutions, it also raises significant problems related to metering, billing, charge back and accounting. In this paper, after reviewing common hybrid cloud integration patterns, we discuss the importance of usage metering and the associated challenges in hybrid cloud environments. We then present a novel solution for metering of services delivered from multiple cloud providers. In this approach, service metering is keyed off of the life-cycle events generated by the service management controls across the hybrid cloud. By identifying life-cycle events associated with services consumed, service usage is tracked from all sources and then filtered and aggregated in a centralized manner. The aggregated information can then be used in an on-line manner for policy-based service delivery, charge-back, billing and reporting, and auditing. Based on this approach we have developed an end-to-end service usage metering and billing system for hybrid cloud environments. Some of the key underlying technologies have been incorporated in IBM SmartCloud Orchestrator - an IBM offering for managing workload patterns in multi cloud environments.