CYCLOPS The Ultimate Billing Framework for Cloud Services Dr. Piyush Harsh, ICCLab InIT Zurich University of Applied Sciences Zürcher Fachhochschule

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1 CYCLOPS The Ultimate Billing Framework for Cloud Services Dr. Piyush Harsh, ICCLab InIT Zurich University of Applied Sciences

2 Cloud services today Commoditization Same set of services being offered Compute, Network, Storage Almost no differentiation similar SLAs too. It is hard to compete with big players Amazon AWS Google Compute Engine Microsoft Azure

3 So how to keep up? Agility Rapid technological innovation Difficult to compete with big-fat budgets of the bigwigs Innovative business models Resellers, distributors network Out of the box pricing schemes Value added services? What could they be Can storage over SSD be called a VAS? Identify your customers Small/mid scale businesses look at their needs

4 Understanding your customers A new startup view of the world! Operates in a hyper-cost-sensitive mode Probably experts in their core offerings, but OSS/BSS frameworks (for cheap) CRM systems (for cheap) And many other support systems (for cheap) And one such VAS is a sound framework for rating-charging-billing! Clouds can provide these support systems On-demand Elastic Pay-as-you-go Measured service

5 RCB framework is an important enabler Fundamental process results in revenue generation for services offered. Rating determining unit rate of a resource/service being consumed Charging convert consumption data into cost owed to the provider Billing consolidation of owed charges and special conditions (discounts, penalties, promotions, coupons, etc.) Typically A manual process Monolithic system, custom built for a particular scenario Rigid product portfolio Rigid pricing models Expensive Use case change needs a full revamp! Ideally Should be automated Modular system, generic Future readiness Support for changing business needs Easy to maintain and cheap RCB should be an enabler!

6 A time for introspection! Are your cloud services billing process streamlined What about economic agility? Is the process automated? Hopefully not Excel automation! Can your rating-charging-billing framework support differentiated pricing to fit your clients needs? If you answered NO to any of these questions, you need to rethink your RCB strategy!

7 Cyclops: The flexible billing framework! Built grounds up for cloud services Full support for OpenStack metering True usage based charging and billing (pay-as-you-go) Supports event based billing CloudStack support (under development) Cloud Foundry and OpenShift support External application metrics supported Micro-services architecture Each component is feature complete, reusable RESTful APIs Installation scripts and heat templates Provides as-a-service, on-demand deployment (orchestration ready)

8 Cyclops: Cloud Billing made Simple! Powerful dashboard Exploits the full power of underlying micro-services Beautiful real-time visualization Resource Consumption Charts Resource rate visualization (for greater operational transparency) Resource usage cost visualization Resource and cost forecasting (under development)

9 The micro-services architecture

10 The micro-services architecture

11 The micro-services architecture

12 The micro-services architecture

13 UDR: Usage Data Records Generator Periodic collection of IaaS metered data External application s usage data insertion Creation of usage data records APIs for data visualization, analytics, report retrieval.

14 RC: Rating and Charging m-service Policy based rate generation (static/dynamic) Dynamic rates based on external parameters (datacenter load, user activity, power supply rates, etc.) Periodic generation of users charge records API for retrieval of historic resource rates, charge statistics.

15 Billing m-service API for bill generation Support for SLA violation into periodic bills Discounts, promotions Converts CDRs into bill line data

16 Cyclops Dashboard Unified experience for admins and customers Common UI for controlling m-services behavior Leverages APIs of the underlying m-services Maintains association of multiple service IDs of a customer For usage data correlation Maintains already generated bills database

17 Cyclops Dashboard

18 Cyclops Dashboard

19 Cyclops Dashboard

20 Cyclops Security User authentication and authorization Encrypted HTTPS mode is supported Supports OAuth2 protocol 2-factor authentication can be enabled Split level dashboard application design All interaction to m-services over internal network Minimizes interfaces exposed over public Internet

21 What still keeps us busy? Intelligent caching scheme To make dashboard more responsive to repeated requests Auditability of stored data records WORM storage solutions? OAuth authorization between all m-services Intuitive service portfolio management module Part of the dashboard, Would allow for products creation and management of rating and billing rules associated with the product.

22 Use Cases Mobile Cloud Networking Full telecommunication stack, split into individual standalone components Virtualized, and hosted over clouds Orchestrated, offered as-a-service on-demand! Need for a RCB framework to handle Telco + Cloud metrics (unified billing) Cyclops UDR allows this Support for external data RC allows custom rating rules Attached to custom meters

23 Use Cases Marketplace for NFV (TNova) Multi-actor rating-charging-billing scenario Bills from operators to customer SLA violations and penalties to be factored in Bills from NF-Developers to operators Revenue sharing reports SLA violations and penalties to be factored in Event based billing Start/end of subscription cycles One-time service setup costs to be factored in Status: WIP, feature availability expected mid-july 2015

24 Short Demo

25 Availability and Roadmap Initial release available now UDR m-service (v 0.4) RC m-service (v 0.2.0) Billing m-service (v 0.0.1) Support modules Dashboard (v 0.1.0) AuthN/Z m-service (v 0.1.0) Individual Repositories

26 Q&A Do visit us at our booth Find out if Cyclops supports your specific needs. Experience first-hand how easy it is to use the framework. Feel free to send queries to: Piyush Harsh Srikanta Patanjali