Cloud Cockpit

Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS)

Insight

Executive Summary
Cloud Computing encompasses a broad range of services that are available upon subscription. With several significant developments, evolution and revolution; cloud technology has evolved to encompass Software as a Service (SaaS), Platform as a Service (PaaS), Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), Security as a Service, and On Demand Services over the Internet, among others. Apart from this, many vendors have seized the term Cloud and are using it for products that sit outside of the common definition of cloud. The cloud marketplace is progressively becoming more diverse, and incoherent, at the same time.
In todays business scenario, the need to buy equipment required to support operations has disappeared. Storage, hardware, servers and networking components, including the big expenses concerning their maintenance and periodic upgrade are now the service providers problem, with the client paying only for what they require and when they require the same. This means that the service provider becomes an extremely important partner, whose professionalism, technical acumen and ability for innovation are crucial. The focus of this white paper is to provide an insight into the subscription and monetization platform for IaaS providers.

Introduction
The challenging economic environment has increased pressure on IT departments to keep costs down. In this changing environment, businesses prefer not to spend on large, expensive physical equipment, hardware or servers which are used for different operations. Storage, hardware, servers and networking components, including the big expenses concerning their maintenance and periodic upgrade are now the service providers concern, with the client paying only for what they require and when they require the same. Iass billing

Fast Facts
The cloud computing marketplace will reach $16.7B in revenue by 2013, including the large and well-established software-as-a-service (SaaS) category, according to a research report by 451 Market Monitor, compared to a revenue of $8.7B in 2010.
According to the Cloud Storage Market-Worldwide Forecasts & Analysis research report (that includes Cloud Storage Gateways, Backup & Recovery, Data Movement & Access, Data Replication, Hsm & Archiving, Security And Storage Resource Management Solutions), published by MarketsandMarkets, the global cloud market is expected to grow from $5.6 billion in 2012 to $46.8 billion by 2013, at an estimated CAGR of 40.2% from 2013 to 2018.

Characteristics of IaaS
Allows for the distribution of resources as a service on subscription Allows for dynamic scaling Enables variable cost based on utility pricing model Includes multiple users on a single piece of hardware Facilitates reseller commissions Works on Quote to Cash model

Challenges
Are you delaying the launch of your new service because your billing system is not ready? Are you unable to support new pricing models with your existing billing system? Are you unsure if you are billing the right amount? Are your customers complaining about your bills? Are you taking more than a month to finish your month end closing?

IaaS on Subscription Model

In general, IaaS is delivered on a subscription basis which facilitates the enterprise to shift from the CAPEX model to the OPEX model. IaaS providers have different kinds of business processes and strategies to capture the market share. While IaaS provides massive advantages for situations where scalability and quick provisioning are beneficial, there are situations where its limitations may be problematic.

Over the past few years, IaaS has evolved into a fullfledged industry. Many traditional systems are becoming obsolete when it comes to IaaS providers requirements. The reason being the paradigm shift in the way these IaaS providers operate. This also applies to a billing system.
Traditional billing systems are not able to meet the requirements of Cloud providers. The basic idea, around which a traditional billing system is built, is the reason they are not able to cope up with the highly dynamic IaaS Cloud Industry requirements. However, the right ecosystem can ensure access to a major share in the market.

Cloud IaaS market to grow by 47.8% through 2015.

Iass billing software

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The importance of a robust subscription and monetization platform

In the Cloud eco-system, the major application which facilitates the service provider to streamline the business process is a platform that handles billing and monetization. The requirements of a robust subscription system are mentioned below. Support Quote to Cash model Reduce revenue leakage Provide different charge models have to be supported such as recurring & pay as you go model Integrate with traditional, on-premise & hosted applications to streamline the process Enable Reseller commissions Enable White Labelling Provide MIS reports to make informed decisions

Payment collections from customers in multiple currencies. Credit distribution towards debit instruments, like pending payments, late payment charges etc. Various payment modes such as credit card, direct debit, bank, ATM, cash, cheque etc. Payment processing in near real-time through integration with interactive on line payment gateways. Identification of customers who are due for renewals / payments by enabling effective follow up for on-time collections. Collection follow-up stage configuration and mapping them to pre-defined actions such as sending reminder messages to hold or disconnect the subscription. Accurate data capture for conducting aging analysis.

Pain Points of Cloud Subscription Business

Manage Recurring Billing - not a One-Time Sale Usage, Rating, Invoices, Notifications and Payment Collection Managing Scale - managing new and existing subscribers, Customer Billing Queries become a challenge as you try to scale your business The Need for Analytics - MRR, Churn, Customer Profitability, Customer Usage Subscription Businesses are becoming complex due to Legacy and New Price Plans

Service Fulfilment
When a customer is paying, he/she/corporate expects the service to be enabled or on the fly based on the SLA. This is possible only when the Service Provider has an efficient Service Fulfilment Solution.
Post the Service Enablement, it is the Service Providers responsibility to keep track of Service, Usage, Credit Limit, Usage Limit with proper Reminders and Alarms, which will enable the Service Provider to up-sell and increase revenue channels.

The Importance of a Revenue Management Module

The collection module ensures automatic generation of bills and invoices resulting in appropriate payments being collected from customers; from respective channel partners through different payment options. Timely collection of payments will bring in the desired cash flow into the service providers organization.

Benefits
Efficient way of bundling and pricing services Manage complex pricing schedules Unified financial data and operations Tailor bill presentment based on customer preferences Automated Revenue management and Billing Inbuilt metering and usage tracking Pre-integrated payment gateway(s) Increase insight into business performance Lightweight CRM for handling customer queries and support

A robust revenue management module comes with the below set of features.

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The Evolution of SURE!

In the Subscription business, our world-class productline, SURE (short for Subscription Revolution), is an experience which has been changing the business fortunes of our globally spread clients in PayTV, Broadband and Cloud businesses.

SURE! is one of the worlds leading Subscription Lifecycle Management software solutions, based on the methodology of providing a solution spanning across the spectrum of engagement between the subscriber and the service provider. Flexible price plans management Many IaaS players come up with flexible price plans to address multiple segments of customers. But this often complicates the internal process making it cumbersome. But with its ability to handle such price plan, one can automate the billing management. Integration ability The ability to integrate with various systems using its industry standard Web Service APIs and offline integration is important. Apart from this, the ability to integrate using SURE! Observer Agent Technology helps integration with any third party system in the eco-system.

Virtualization platform in your ecosystem For automating the billing management process, customer usage details should be provided. But a manual upload of usage details will again reduce the efficiency. This led to the automation of activation of services for a new customer on the one hand (provisioning) and keeping track of the usage of the customer (monitoring) on the other. Once the usage details are procured, the bill can be generated based on the pre-defined price plans and available usage details. Service portal integration IaaS providers offer My Account or Self Care for their customers. This allows the customer to view and manage usage and billing. IaaS providers have also provided a facility to pay for their utilized services through a website. SURE! has successfully integrated various online payment facilitators to support this. Payment gateway integration Payment gateway integration has enabled IaaS providers to collect payments from various methods like Credit Card, Debit Card and Online Money Transfer, besides traditional ways. Payments and collections impact the balance sheet of a company. Hence, integrating with FAS systems is imperative. FAS Integrations Most IaaS activities are metered financial activities. Updating the financial system manually depending on a cloud service providers transactions will lead to redundancy. Hence, integration of various FAS with the cloud service provider is important. This leads to seamless flow of integration from one system to another. SURE! manages all this financial and operational information effectively. Information management Single-view screen, which gives a 360 degree view of all the data, is in vogue. The information available in the Cloud service providers dashboard is accurate and can be very useful for making informed managerial decisions.

Copyright @ 2013 SURE!. All Rights Reserved.

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SURE! Deployed Solutions

CLIENT: Industry IDC
With more and more business processes and citizen services operating over the Internet, there is a need to set up strategic infrastructure that facilitates high availability, quick scalability, efficient management and optimized utilization of resources.

SURE! (Billing & Customer Relationship Management) aggregates customer data, infrastructure usage data, order details and billing data to improve operations.

Solution Drivers Contract Management Packaging, Pricing with Promo Codes Metering Dashboards Reports Subscription & Billing Partner Management & Revenue Settlements Product Snapshot SURE! is a Subscription Management, Metering & Billing Product developed by Magnaquest Technologies Limited Over 15 years of domain experience Global Customer base with presence in more than 35 countries Employees with offices in the USA, India and Malaysia Customer Challenge Enabling the service in near real-time with server-level resource management Honouring the Service Level Agreements and Quality of Service as promised Monitoring usage and sending usage reminders to control Revenue Leakages and enabling Upgrading and Upselling Regular analysis of service performance and creation of new bundles for revenue optimization Customer Solution CPU size and power Network bandwidth Storage Other System Software license usage Iass billing software

Business modules include Service catalogue Usage metrics dashboard Contract management and Billing run Infrastructure providers often use resellers and partner channels to sell products. SURE! allows providers to manage the usage and billing aspects of these relationships.

Solution Overview SURE! Deployed Solutions

2. Customer Brief Joyent is a Cloud Computing vendor of Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS). Joyents main product is a line of virtualized servers called Joyent Accelerators. Joyents clients use collections of Accelerators to power-large scale web sites and web applications. Joyent provides a more flexible and cost-effective alternative to buying and running your own IT infrastructure, while still providing all the security, cost stability, and enterprisegrade performance of a

Copyright@2013SURE!. AllRightsReserved.

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dedicated private data center. Joyents clients include Disney ABC, LinkedIn, Sympathy Tree, Major League Baseballs MLB.com, the hit shopping site Gilt.com, and over 25% of the daily active application usage on Facebook. Customer Challenge With a complex monthly billing cycle, Joyent needed to efficiently and accurately invoice its customers. Doing so would help the accounting and billing department with reduced cost and increased productivity which in turn helps in the generation of timely and accurate policy based bills. Customer Solution Joyent took a look at a) building an in house billing solution and b) buying platform services from vendors. After evaluating the capabilities of SURE! On Demand Monetization Platform (S-OMP), and other competitive alternatives, they chose SURE! The S-OMP Collates data from heterogeneous platforms deployed at Joyent. Integrates seamlessly with usage repository and aggregates the information on an easy to use dashboard.

Helps Joyent visualize how customers are utilizing their business services. Provides a detailed view of how specific customers are using / not using the services. Allows modelling of complex pricing and subscription plans. Stores contract terms for billing based on service usage. Integrates with Joyents accounting system.

The Benefits Saved approximately $200,000 development expense Systematic, intuitive & easy to use, with no need for extensive training Better utilization of scarce resources to value-added projects & offerings

Client Speak
We are very pleased with the results we have seen with SURE!s service. The integration capabilities of the platform allowed us to systematically migrate. With the SURE! platform we were able to consolidate our usage based billing mechanism. Peter Watridge, CFO, Joyent Inc.

Summary
Earlier generations of billing were complex, they became obsolete; the return on investment varied widely between companies. In a large number of cases it was not optimal. The installation did not produce even a minimum level of expected benefits. Besides this, calculation of the ROI itself posed major problems since many of the end results of the monetization platform were difficult to measure and quantify. SURE! billing and monetization platform is intuitive, easier to use and easier to integrate with third party systems or other enterprise software. The different modules such as Contract Management, Quotation Management, Partner Management, Flexible Pricing & Product Management among others enable the service provider to be flexible and scale up to the market changes which are dynamic in nature. The modules can be added incrementally. Thus, SURE! provides the service provider with enhanced choice, flexibility and confidence.

Global Footprint

MALAYSIA
Magnaquest Solutions Sdn Bhd (566396-A) mqmalaysia@magnaquest.com | +60 3 8318 2964

Magnaquest Technologies Lim

USA
Magnaquest Solutions Inc. mqusa@magnaquest.com | +14807063444

Plot No.1523 & 1524, Road No.1 Banjara Hills, Hyd Tel : +91 40 23320220 / 233209 Fax : +91 40 23370037 mqindia@magnaquest.com