{"id":4388,"date":"2013-05-16T16:32:22","date_gmt":"2013-05-16T14:32:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.zhaw.ch\/icclab\/?p=4388"},"modified":"2018-08-24T16:29:42","modified_gmt":"2018-08-24T14:29:42","slug":"rating-charging-billing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.zhaw.ch\/icclab\/rating-charging-billing\/","title":{"rendered":"Rating, Charging, Billing"},"content":{"rendered":"
This page is kept for archiving. Please navigate to our new site: blog.zhaw.ch\/splab<\/a>.<\/div>\n

Description<\/h2>\n

Financial accounting is a very critical process in the monetization process of any service. In the telecommunication world, these processes have long been documented, used, and standardized. Cloud computing being a relatively new paradigm, is still undergoing a transition phase. Many new services are being defined and there is still a huge untapped potential to be exploited.<\/p>\n

Rating, Charging, and Billing (RCB) are key activities that allows a service provider to fix monetary values for the resources and services it offers, and allows it to bill the customers consuming the services offered.<\/p>\n

Problem Statement<\/h2>\n

Given a general service scenario, how can the key metrics be identified. The identification of measurable metrics is essential for determining a useful pricing function to be attached to the metric. The challenges we are trying to address under this initiative are multi-dimensional. Is it possible to come up with a general enough RCB model that can address the needs of multiple cloud services – IaaS, PaaS, SaaS, and many more that would be defined in the future?<\/p>\n

Where is the correct boundary between real-time charging strategy, which could be very resource intensive, versus a periodic strategy which has the risk of over-utilization of resources by the consumers between two cycles? Can a viable middle-path strategy be established for cloud based services. Can pre-paid pricing model be adapted for the cloud?<\/p>\n

Simplified workflow<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"rcb-simplified\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Architecture<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>\n\n\n\n\t\n\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t
Microservice<\/th>Repository<\/th>\n<\/tr>\n<\/thead>\n
User Data Records<\/td>https:\/\/github.com\/icclab\/cyclops-udr<\/a><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Rating & Charging<\/td>https:\/\/github.com\/icclab\/cyclops-rc<\/a><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Billing<\/td>https:\/\/github.com\/icclab\/cyclops-billing<\/a><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Dashboard<\/td>https:\/\/github.com\/icclab\/cyclops-support<\/a><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n<\/p>\n

Developing<\/h2>\n