Sidebar: Beyond 'standard features'
To handle the complex partnerships, expectations and negotiations necessary in cloud, operators need billing geared toward B2B relationships.
Cloud providers should be able to tailor services to corporate hierarchies - users, departments and projects - in order to work within classic corporate reporting structures, says MetraTech CEO Scott Swartz.
"If billing systems can recognize and accommodate the different types of usage inherent with an 'engineering project' vs a 'marketing project' vs an 'R&D project', then there is more that can be done with dynamic pricing to build satisfaction and loyalty if spikes of usage are tracked and accounted for so that budgeting is built around the specific needs of different groups, people and initiatives."
Having the ability to negotiate deals on an individual case basis is something Swartz says gets an "I can't believe" response from customers.
"If you can negotiate deals with changeable parameters around minutes, megabytes, data transfer costs and data interchange rates among different regions important to your client, then each customer is comfortable that contracts reflect what is important to them, as opposed to being forced into standard features," explained Swartz.
In addition to billing corporate entities individually, a holistic view that shows aggregate rates and bundles for region-to-region billing will make procurement individuals at multinationals happy as well, according to Swartz. "They want a 'total-book-of-business' view that aggregates rating based on volumes, purchasing commitments, discounts and incentives, while simultaneously having tailored schemes for each of their regions."