Univa UD CEO on billing cloud services

Univa UD, which was formed by the 2007 merger of grid computing and cluster software firms Univa and United Devices, is now focused on enabling telecom service providers to get into the growing cloud computing game. Univa UD CEO Jason Liu called this a “once-in-a-generation opportunity” for telecom carriers. Liu explained how these service providers will monetize the cloud. …

“There are five different IT services [telecom service providers] can provide: managed application hosting, utility computing (basically renting storage or server or network) and disaster recovery. There are three ways to price it: based on service levels, usage and bandwidth.

“Where it ends up is the airline industry, where, instead of charging everyone the same amount for a seat, you can charge different amounts based on if they're a frequent flyer, if they're a business or vacation traveler, if they're in the front of the plane versus the back. Telecom providers are uniquely positioned to deliver that because they own the network and are used to pricing based on service levels.

“In the past, most hosting providers charged on a per-node basis. Amazon is charging per hour per node. With a usage-based approach, you can charge people more or less based on volume. You can give big customers volume discounts, or if you're hosting an application for a payroll company, you can charge more for a higher service quality that last day of the month when everyone's using the payroll system. In service-level-based pricing, you can calculate how long it takes a Web page to render, a report to run, a feature within a hosted app to run — and charge more. If you have a big e-commerce site and you want to make sure all your customers finish their purchases within 25 seconds, you may be willing to pay more to ensure that.”