The world is showing an increasing acceptance for multi/hybrid cloud deployment models, compared to largely a single provider deployment models seen until now. Concepts such as Edge / Fog computing together with IoT use cases are creating a buzz. Currently, a deployment with a thousand VMs or containers is already considered complex. IoT together with Fog/Edge deployment models, and additionally with emergence of smart everything everywhere goal, the number of active components in a reasonable deployment can easily become billions. The well known processes of accounting and billing will increasingly transform themselves into big data problems. With such a transformation, comes newer challenges:
– how does one balance the competing requirements of multi-step aggregation heavy data transmission strategy with fine-grained audit-ability requirements of invoice/bill data from the regulators / users ?
– what are the relevant billable metrics for an IoT application with Edge/Fog deployment model?
– what is the cost of billing process itself for such deployments, is it cost effective? If not, what will the architecture transformation look like?
– will secure ledgers become a key enabler technology for our problem?
– how can emerging paradigms such as FaaS be used to minimize self cost?
By performing applied research around the relevant topic of Cloud Accounting and Billing, we advance the state of technology and help in driving technological innovation. For more information, contact Piyush Harsh who champions this research topic.
