Utility Pricing in Cloud

The license management technology is still behind the times when it comes to cloud deployment. Most of the license enforcement mechanisms are based on hostname, ip address, usernames and are licensed based on seats.

There is pretty much no utility based pricing anywhere in the cloud. Either it is a flat subscription or a host based or site based license. If we want to regulate the internet as a utility, we need to figure out a way to charge the user for software used as a utility. There is nothing that I can see inside software system that even meters usage. Without this there is no way to bill a user based on usage. A utility based smartmeter for software is something that the industry needs if cloud biz model is to take off.