The current pricing of Cloud services offers a wide range of configuration, choices and price points for the users. This in turn creates a lot of confusion for the buyer as it’s difficult to measure the value at a specific price point. The objective of this article is to analyze the existing pricing models and reasons behind why there is so much diversity. In the following four sections, this article attempts to:
Compare approx. 27 models of pricing derived from the scholarly articles
Recommend a derived pricing model relevant to the cloud services.
Validate the model by mapping it to the pricing of services by few key vendors.
Analyze reasons behind the pricing in use by various vendors and future trends.