Cloud Computing System Management Under Flat Rate Pricing

Success of cloud computing service depends on an acceptable pricing mechanism both by users and the service provider. Piece rate pricing by counting work load should be favorable for the service provider due to the QoS control and finite resource, such as computing and, communication powers. Though the pricing mechanism based on counting work load is reasonable and fair, the experiences learned from ADSL, 3G and Wi-Fi show a different story. The flat rate pricing mechanism is the winner all the way. This study proposes a flat rate pricing mechanism with congestion control, called FRPCC. In the cloud computing system, allocation of resources can be formulated as an optimization problem seeking to maximize the sum of the utility function of each user under the constraints of fairness. The piece rate pricing mechanism is easy to achieve the social welfare but is not easy to be acceptable for customers. Consequently, we propose a congestion control scheme to reach the same goal with a flat rate pricing mechanism. The proposed FRPCC approach can achieve social welfare in the cloud computing environment. Performance evaluations show efficacy of, FRPCC approach in providing social welfare under fairness and preventing congestion.