Everything I Needed to Know about Chargeback I learned in Kindergarten - by Jamal Malik

imageIf Jimmy has five apples and he eats two of them, how many apples does Jimmy have left?

I’m sure everyone at some point in their lives were asked a question resembling the one above. Cloud and Datacenter Solutions HubInterestingly enough, it is not far from a method of chargeback based on consumption based pricing (no pun intended).

Although we talk about chargeback (or ‘showback’ in some circles) in regards to building clouds most conversations default to consumption based usage of achieving chargeback.

There are however multiple methods of achieving chargeback and I wanted to discuss a few of them in this thread.

These different methods only differ in terms of complexity and provide models to charge for services based on the needs\maturity of the organization and composition of Services.

The first and easiest Chargeback method is Notional Pricing. Notional Pricing aggregates the cost of services as a single unit and it is then shared to Business Units. This method makes sense for organizations that are not looking to turn a profit from providing cloud services and instead just want to “showback” to the business the cost of providing cloud capabilities. It can still have an impact on consumption behavior because usage of services can at least be related to the business in terms of “who is using what” however this does not happen through the service provider\service consumer relationship.

The second form of chargeback is “Fixed + Variable Pricing”. This chargeback method builds on Notional Pricing as there is a “base” fee for consuming cloud services and a variable cost is added to specific services hosted for individual business units. This can be a method to share the cost of “Shared Services” (more on that later) and then for additional resources business units can be charged separately. This method provides better consumer behavior as usage of resources can be provided almost immediately and tied specifically to business units.

The third (and most popular) form of chargeback is “Consumption Based Pricing” . This is by far the most complex of the chargeback models however it enables completely the service provider model of delivering services. Business units (or tenants) are charged specifically for every Service that is used. Now, this form of chargeback can get a bit complex and the different methods of enabling this model can fill a book. So, for the purposes of this thread I’ll stick to “Quota-Based” chargeback (and not metered or measured use Chargeback).

Quota based chargeback is fairly straight forward. Tenants (or business units) are assigned a specific amount of quota (Jimmy has been assigned five apples). The tenants however are only charged for the quotas that they consume (Jimmy only ate two apples). Here, resources can be oversubscribed to tenants (which is perfectly fine) and service providers then manage capacity and demand of resource pools to fulfill tenants request for resources (easy right?). Tenants are only charged for the resources they deploy based on their quota assignment. In regards to IaaS (for example) we are referring to virtual machines here where:

1 Quota Point = $100

  • Small VM = 1xCPU + 1 GB RAM + 40 GB Storage + 1GB NIC  = 1 Quota Point ($100)
  • Medium VM = 2xCPU + 2GB RAM + 100 GB Storage + 10GB NIC = 2 Quota Points ($200)
  • Etc…

In this model the tenants are charged for resources that are deployed over time (let’s say 30 days).

If the Virtual Machine sits idle for the 30 days at little to no CPU Utilization the cost of the VM does not change.

It is important to note that if an organization is beginning their journey towards building a cloud solution it is important to start with Notional Pricing and work their way up to consumption based pricing. If you are working with a hoster or service provider for example they will want to jump into Consumption Based Pricing for obvious reasons. The reason why it is important to make this gradual change is because organizations typically need time to adjust to a new model of consuming for\paying for services.

Additionally, most organizations do not have the financial systems in place to support Consumption Based Pricing ‘out-of-the-door’. If for example an organization’s IT department is 100% funded by the business then turning around one day and telling business units you must now pay for IT services will sound absurd (if not unachievable). I am over simplifying the quota point method and certain variable can also be added to the cost of resources if desired (additional memory or Storage and etc…) A multiplier or premium can also be added for the type of storage being utilized (Bronze, Silver, Gold for example).

The plot thickens once you start working up the cloud stack (PaaS and SaaS). In regards to charging back for workloads you now have to define whether you are providing Services to Tenants based on Workload Segmentation or Infrastructure Segmentation. That however, is a conversation for another day…

To read more about Chargeback methods and Financial Management for Cloud Capabilities check out this article on TechNet:

https://social.technet.microsoft.com/wiki/contents/articles/4519.private-cloud-planning-guide-for-service-delivery.aspx

Would like to hear the community’s thoughts on their own experiences in working with organizations in enabling chargeback.

I imagine many issues to ‘overcome’ have more to do with organizational dynamics more so that technical challenges,

Jamal Malik
Business Solutions Architect
Datacenter/Private Cloud Center of Excellence


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