Cutting Through the Confusion: What Makes a True Cloud Billing Solution
January 17, 2014
Grazed from Cloud Computing Intelligence. Author: Editorial Staff.
With businesses of all sizes and across all sectors of the economy transitioning to cloud computing, IT vendors are racing to position themselves at the cutting-edge of what remains one of the industry’s hottest topics. Cloud billing has become a dynamic growth area. Yet, it is becoming ever harder for buyers to cut through the hype and understand the term. Is a cloud billing system one that bills for cloud services, or a billing system that resides in the cloud?
To some vendors, it does not seem to matter. Just put "cloud" in the product/solution name and voilà, they have a "cloud billing" system. Certainly, among some businesses there is a desire to jump on the cloud bandwagon – a sense that the cloud is now becoming so pervasive that they need to be involved. They must have a cloud story to tell or risk being left behind by the competition. This drive by businesses to be seen as "cloud-based", even when they are not, is creating market confusion and, in turn, that confusion risks damaging the sector immeasurably…
What the industry needs is consistency and clarity so that buyers know what they are getting themselves into. So, how can this be achieved? To shed some light on the issues, let’s take a brief look at the services and applications that are sometimes confused with cloud billing. First, let’s consider billing for cloud services. In many industry sectors it has been common for the system capability to be identified in the name, for example, a utility billing system or a cable billing system. So from here it’s not a huge leap to assume that a cloud billing system would bill for cloud services. But cloud CRM systems are not only used for cloud services, so why should this be the case for cloud billing systems?…
Read more from the source @ http://cloudcomputingintelligence.com/index.php/resource-centre/articles/latest-article/980-cutting-through-the-confusion-what-makes-a-true-cloud-billing-solution