We also see consumer usage charges on the digital media front. Think Amazon video on-demand. You “pay per watch” or perhaps in the “Amazon MP3 download” model. Consumers like being presented the metered version, but they want an option to limit their downside with a greater brand commitment.

Metered consumer usage is great, but it has to “make sense to the purchaser”, be easy to understand and consumers need available options if they find the plan too onerous.

Hi Curt,

I couldn’t agree more that the cloud is changing the way companies will/are thinking about billing models. But what about the acceptance of such models online by consumers? Have you seen any backlash?

Thanks for the information about the LinkedIn group. It’s always good to have as many independent sources as possible!

cheers,

craig.

There a many companies that are exploring usage based billing models to better support their business models. Today just about any cloud provider (public or private) is grappling with developing or leveraging a billing system for their offering. Whether it be EC2, or Azure etc.. they are focusing on compute hours, gig/terabytes, or elasticity. This model is also making its way into the Cloud App / SaaS space as well and due to the nature of our business we see it more every day.

As a resource, there is a new group on LinkedIn called “Cloud & Saas Startups” that has also been exploring some new pricing models and trends in the industry.