This Common Capability covers the procedure of billing consumers for their usage of the providers services according to the pricing terms agreed upon between the two parties which are defined in the SLA.
In order for the billing of customers to be done through the SLAs, the SLA template must be designed accordingly. More specifically, some SLA metrics should represent pricing terms describing how the consumer will be charged for the usage of a specific resource.
The metrics representing pricing terms should contain information such as the price for using the metric, the currency and the billing period for which the price is valid. According to the type of metric, different charges may apply. The SLA template design must be flexible enough to allow for different types of metrics and charges. Charges may be made for the cumulative usage of a metric or for the increase in the measurement of a metric over the billing period.
The Accounting component should periodically collect usage information provided by the Runtime Monitoring component and calculate the charges that should be made to the customer. At any time the customer should be able to view the usage of resources he has made along with the respective charges.
It is also possible to define penalties that will be imposed to the consumer when one of his applications causes an SLA violation. In that case, the penalty fee related to the violation of a constraint should also be included in the SLA template as an SLA term. The Runtime Monitoring component should send notifications to the Accounting module each time a violation occurs, so that the latter can calculate the fee based on the SLA and notify the consumer.
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