Cloud Computing Energy Efficiency and Fair Pricing Mechanisms for Smart Cities

We are surrounded by state-of-the-art technologies that have drastically changed and continue to change our lives at a fast pace. To overcome the modern-day challenges in cloud services, it is important to have a proper business model and a fair pricing mechanism, which are as important as the technological developments being offered. Based on the similarities between the concept of cloud infrastructure and Smart Cities, we can say that the cloud environment is the lower layer in any Smart City architecture, and any improvement in the cloud pricing mechanism and cloud sustainability can be modeled and used in the Smart City concept. This paper will discuss the similarities between the cloud infrastructures and Smart Cities, as well as their respective business models. Furthermore, this paper provides a comprehensive survey of the cloud pricing mechanisms and the challenges that it deals with, to shed light on the potentiality of improving the sustainability and pricing mechanisms on the cloud or any similar state-of-the-art technologies.