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Managing and Pricing the Cloud
Project Report for Microeconomics course
PGPEM-2019
Team members:
Nandini Bhavasar 1916007
Kanchan Kalra 1916024
Saurabh Kanaujia 1916025
Shekhar Kanodia 1916026
Gurunathan Subramanyan 1916066
Abhishek Suresh Babu 1916067
Sridharan Vallabhaneni 1916076
2
Table of Contents
Project Report Objective & Executive Summary.............................................................................. 4
Project Report Objective ...........................................................................................................4
Executive Summary................................................................................................................... 4
Introduction.................................................................................................................................5
Market Structure.......................................................................................................................... 5
The Oligopoly Market................................................................................................................ 5
Fewfirms.............................................................................................................................. 5
Existence of Price Rigidity/Non-Price Competition..................................................................5
Barriers to Entry of Firms.......................................................................................................5
Advertising............................................................................................................................ 5
Group Behavior..................................................................................................................... 6
Nature of the Product............................................................................................................ 6
Indeterminateness of Demand Curve ..................................................................................... 6
Economies of scale................................................................................................................ 6
The Competitive Market............................................................................................................ 6
SaaS Market Analysis............................................................................................................. 6
Production costs of Cloud Services.................................................................................................8
Rack Cost.............................................................................................................................. 8
Server Cost........................................................................................................................... 8
Onboarding the customers.....................................................................................................9
Support cost......................................................................................................................... 9
Promotion activities.............................................................................................................. 9
Fixed Cost............................................................................................................................. 9
Variable Cost....................................................................................................................... 10
Price Competition....................................................................................................................... 10
Cloud Pricing Schemes......................................................................................................... 11
Dynamic Pricing................................................................................................................... 11
Market-Dependent Pricing................................................................................................... 11
Cloud Pricing Model ............................................................................................................ 11
Pricing models..................................................................................................................... 12
Price Discrimination............................................................................................................. 12
Profit Maximization .................................................................................................................... 14
Consumer Behavior.................................................................................................................... 14
Appendix.................................................................................................................................... 15
3
Glossary..................................................................................................................................... 15
References................................................................................................................................. 15
4
Project Report Objective & Executive Summary
Project Report Objective
Cloudtechnologyhasstartedtoreplace the traditional on-premise legacysoftware andtodayalmost
all the major businessesare migratingtowardscloud.A surveyconductedbyMcAfee suggeststhat
87% organizationsexperience businessaccelerationbyusing cloudservices. Inthe nascentstagesof
growth,securitywasa major concernforcompaniesandhence companiesavoidedmovingtocloud.
The surveyalsosuggeststhat52% of the organizationsexperience bettersecurityinthe cloudthan
on-premise ITenvironments.Almost36% of the organizationsbelievethattheycanenforce dataloss
preventioninthe cloud. Companiesbenefitinnumerouswaysbymigratingtocloudintermsof
opportunitycost,reducedITcost,a fastergo-tomarket, businessgrowth,improvedsecurity,
expansiontonewmarkets.
The followingmicroeconomicsconceptsare coveredinthe report:
 Oligopolisticmarketstructure of the cloudindustry
 ProductionTheory - Economiesof scale
 Cost of Production – Total cost, Fixedcost,Variable cost
 ConsumerTheory
 PricingwithMarketPower
 Profitmaximization
Executive Summary
The cloud can be broadlysegmentedintothe below three categories:
1. Infrastructure asa service (IaaS)
 Hardware service suchas computingpowerandstorage are offeredunderthis
category.
 Examples –AWS and Azure
2. Software asa service (SaaS)
 Online licensedapplicationsare offeredbasedonpayasyou model oron-demand.
 Example – MicrosoftOffice 365
3. Platformasa service (PaaS)
 PaaS offersplatformforcreatingsoftware thatisdeliveredviainternet.
 Example – Force.com(Salesforce)andHeroku
For thisreport,the major focushasbeenon the IaaS segment.The IaaScloudindustryisan
oligopolisticmarketwhichisdominatedbythree majorplayers –AmazonWebServices(AWS),
MicrosoftAzure and Google Cloud.AWSenjoysthe firstmover’sadvantagesince itwaslaunchedin
2006, whereasAzure waslaunchedin2010. Despite thatAzure hasthe privilege of servingmore
than 80% of the Fortune 500 companies.Onthe otherhand, AWS isa popularchoice amongst
startupssuch as Netflix,Pinterest,SpotifyandAirbnb.Similarly,boththesemajorplayershave tried
to segmenttheirmarketsbyincorporatingheterogeneityintermsof focusonhybridcloudsor
supportfor thirdpartyapplications.
5
Introduction
IT expenditure hasbeenamajorcost forall the majorenterprises.The majorcomponentsof this
expense are computationcostandstorage costalongwithIT consultancyandservicingcost.
Historicallythe companieswere forced topurchase the physical hardware whichnotonlyincreased
the costs but alsocreatednon-liquidassets.Cloudcomputingprovidesacost-effective,efficientand
flexible systemof managingthe ITservicesforthe companies.The conceptof on-demandresources
has made iteasy forsmall companiesandstartupstoscale up theircore servicesbyleveragingthe
featuresof cloudcomputing.Itisa win-winsituationforall where the producersurplusand
consumersurplusincreasedsimultaneouslydue to anincrease inthe consumerbase and the
reductionof IT expenditure.
Market Structure
The Oligopoly Market
Oligopoly comprisesof few large sellers (but more than two) of the homogeneous or differentiated
products.
Cloudbusinessfitsthe definitionof ‘oligopoly’veryclosely.Givenbelow are some of the keyfeatures
of oligopoly and how cloud business mimics the behavior given in each definition of feature.
Few firms
In Oligopoly, there are number of firms in market but only few are large competitive players, which
cater to the significantamountof the total marketdemand.Those few playerstryto manipulate the
price and offerings to dominate in market.
The cloud market too has few players who has a significant market share and power. As per some
industry reports, Amazon Web Services (AWS) has 34 percent market share, followed by Microsoft
with 14 per cent and the rest is by other players like Google, IBMand Alibaba.
Existence of Price Rigidity/ Non-Price Competition
InOligopoly,the competitive playersdoesn’tdeviate toomuchfromitspricingplansincereductionin
price may trigger other players to drop prices which can lead to price war and thereby hurt all
producers / service providers.
In April 2013, Amazon and Google entered into price war (Three days after Google announces a 4%
price reduction, Amazon shoots back with a 26% drop). And then again in March 2017, Cloud price
wars was back on when Amazon responded to Google’s flexible cloud pricing announcement.
Barriers to Entry of Firms
The hurdle of entry and exit in the cloud computing industry is a difficult one to cross. Major
companies such as Google, Amazon and Microsoft has invested so much in the infrastructure to
provide cloud services that they have “first mover advantage”. Any new entrant has to access the
marketavailability,the patentsissuedtothesecompanies,costrequiredtobuildupthe infrastructure
before making an entry into this business. One must have a strategic businessanalysis, investment
requirements,patents,knowledge assets,etc.,andthe competitiveedgetocompetewiththese cloud
provider giants.
Advertising
In oligopoly,since the majorplayers cannotreduce the price asit couldleadto price war, one wayto
manipulate/ capture market is via advertising.The competitive firms keep a tab about the moves of
6
each other and make corresponding policy changes. This sometimes leads to aggressive advertising
campaign to beat the other players in the market.
As perarticle in Nov,2017 in Seattle Times,Amazonneverbelievedinadvertisinguntil afterAmazon
elbowedoutIBMto wina high profile contractto provide data centerservicesto CIA,IBM plastered
buses in Las Vegas with ads for its services as visitors gathered for Amazon's 2013 "re: Invent"
conference.Afteracouple of yearsspenttestingthewaterwithlimitedadvertisingexperiments,AWS
decided to strike back this year with its first major brand campaign
Amazon even redesigned the AWS logo, leaving behind the orange cluster of blocks and moving to
new logo of AWS letters with a smiling arrow on top.
Group Behavior
The firms in an industry exhibit varied behavior ranging from competitiveness to collaboration to
capture market and it is required to understand this group behavior of the firms.
For an oligopolisticfirmthe behaviorof firmishighlyunpredictablecomparedtoothermarketforms.
Because theytendtocollude tomaximizetheirprofitsorsometimestheirobjectivesmaybe different
which may lead to exhibit seemingly un-rational behavior.
In June 2019, MicrosoftAzure and oracle clouddecidedtolinktheircloudcomputingservicestotake
on Amazon who is the currently the market leader in cloud offerings.
Nature of the Product
The firmsunderoligopolymay produce homogeneousordifferentiatedproduct.If the firmsproduce
a homogeneousproduct,the industryiscalleda pure or perfectoligopolyandif the firmsproduce a
differentiated product, the industry is called differentiated or imperfect oligopoly.
In cloudbusiness,the productofferingsare bothhomogeneousaswell asdifferentiated.Few players
offersimilarservices(sameDB,OSpackage) whereasfewtrytomarketdifferentiatedproductsuchas
Oracle by advertising about its self-driving database and making claims that even Amazon runs on
Oracle database.
Indeterminateness of Demand Curve
In oligopoly, firms keep changing the prices / quantity and thereby their demand curve is
indeterminate.Kinkeddemandcurve isone of the hypothesistoexplainthe price rigidity.The kinkin
demand curve occurs when the elastic prevailing price becomes inelastic all of sudden.
Economies of scale
The economiesof scale isdefinitelyamajorphenomenoninthe cloudindustry,especiallyforthe
IaaS and PaaS segment.The majorplayerssuchas AWSand Azure have scaledtheirproductionto
such a level thattheycandouble theirproductioneasilywithoutincurringamajorincrease incosts.
Thisis due to the acquisitionof ahuge pool of talenteddevelopersfromthe IvyLeague institutes.
The smallerplayersonthe otherhandstruggle withhighratesof attritionwhichnotonlyincreases
theirvariable costsbutalsopreventsthemfromleveragingthe learningcurve advantages.
The Competitive Market
SaaS Market Analysis
Software asa service marketisclosettoa perfectlycompetitive marketwhere there ismany service
providerswhosometimesprovide homogeneousproducts.Forinstance,the online texteditors,
online photoeditors,online pdf converters.Theydonothave monopolypowersandhence are not
7
able to fix price andappearto be price takers.Rathertheyare dependentonthe online
advertisementsforgeneratingrevenues.
Similarly,the entryandexittobarriersare notveryhighfor the SaaS markets where anyone can
launcha software as a service withminimumexpenses.The fixedcostinvolvesjustthe costof basic
hardware suchas laptopsandthe variable costincludesthe subscriptioncosttocloudservicessuch
as AWS forscalingthe applications. Likewise,the humanresourcecostisalsoa variable costfor the
SaaS market.
Giventhe ease of entryand exitfromthe SaaS market,there existmultiple playersinthe initial
phases.Hence mostof the startups intheirinitial stagesof seed/angel fundingformapart of the
perfectlycompetitive SaaSmarket.
Also,inthe SaaS market,the profitsearnedinthe longtermare almostzero if the startupsfail to
scale up or differentiatetheirproducts.Mostof the companiesorfirmstendtoexitif theyare not
able to meetthe variable costandhence the shutdownrule appliestothismarket.These daysthe
investorsalsolookingforuniteconomicswhere theydonotwantto considertheirinvestmentasa
sunkcost and hence putpressure onthe firmsto differentiate theirproductsandmove awayfrom
the perfectlycompetitive marketstowardsoligopolisticmarketswhere theycanhave some
monopolypowersdue totheirdifferentiatedproductsanddue tothe relativelyinelasticdemand.
8
Production costs of Cloud Services
The motivationtostudythe productioncostsof Cloudservicesarisesbecause the finalpricesforthe
Cloudofferingsmade bythe Cloudgiantsmajorlydependonthe investmentsandthe coststhey’re
incurringinorderto make these servicesavailable.Hence,before deepdivingintothe pricingof the
CloudServices,thissectionprovidesabrief onthe productioncostsinvolved.
Production costs of Cloud Services
Rack Cost
The physical storage costsof hostingthe machinesformthe majorchunkof the productioncosts.This
includes the real estate costs of hosting the data centers, to have it powered continuously, the
networkbandwidthandthe investmentsmade tomaintainthe physicalmachinesinthe datacenters.
Another major contributor to the productions costs is due to the replication – This arises from the
necessity to maintain redundant copies for Business Continuity Plans and also to provide improved
performancesbygeo-replicateddataacrossthe globe.Andmostimportantly,coolingcostsplayavital
role here.Itisa commonknowledgethatmajorspendinadatacentergoestowardsthe coolingcosts
andgiantslike Microsofthave startedinvestinginUnder-waterdatacentertomainlybenefitfromthe
reduced cooling cost amongst other perks.
Server Cost
This section covers the hardware costs of the machines involved along with the costs to keep the
machines patched with the latest updates. We should also note that in any given data center the
varietyof machinesSKUsbeinghostedvariesgreatlyandhence the maintenance costsare also high.
9
Given how frequently we see newer generation computing systems coming into the Software
landscape, it is nearly impossible for any data center to be able to run on a homogenous machine
function. Hence, the added overhead of maintaining machines spanning across a wide spectrum
becomes unavoidable. The network costs of having these machines be online and always available
also fall into this bucket of costs incurred by the Cloud Service providers.
Inadditiontothe above,some of the othernoteworthyspendsof aCloudService providerare below.
Onboarding the customers
The Cloud service providers also spend significant efforts and resources to provide a seamless
experience toonboardnewcustomersfromnon-cloudplatformsorfromothercloudserviceproviders
onto their products.
Support cost
Every major Cloud service provider today does compulsorilyprovide customer support for all issues
thata userfacesinthe cloudservicesitoffers.The SLAsvaryfromrangesspanningfromunder4hours
for SEV 0 issuesto 4 daysfor issueswithlowerseverity.Thiscontinuoussupportalsoentailsa lot of
monetary investments from the service provider.
Promotion activities
Like anyothercompetitiveindustry,the cloudserviceprovidersalsoinvestinpromotingtheirproducts
viathe online advertisingorthroughthe variouseducational programstheyrunin-ordertoinfusethe
usage of their products into students or techies in the industry.
Although,notaverycleardistinctioncanbe drawnbetweenthese,inthe shortrun - the rackcost and
server cost can be demarcated as the fixed costs and others such as Power consumption, network
bandwidth, and marketing are the variable costs.
Costs Overview
Fixed Cost
The depreciationcostis the most commonand significantcostsincurredon IT assetslike the servers
and hard disks. This depreciation is due to the technological advancements and lifespan of these
assets. An occupancy cost is the real estate area required to deploy the racks and servers. An
administration cost is again incurred in administrating, maintaining the servers and hard disks. The
10
power consumption cost includes the cost to power the servers, hard disks, cooling agents like air
conditioners that are continuously engaged during idle time. The cost incurred to setup near-
shore/customer sites, Disaster Recovery Sites that ensures high availability, Network Infrastructure
cost for network gears like routers and switches all contribute to the fixed cost.
Variable Cost
The powerconsumedbycoolingagents,serversandharddisksat an active state contributes
significantlytowardsvariable costs.Additionally,the costsincurredinbranding,marketingandother
overheadscanbe consideredasVariable cost.
If we were toput an equationtothe total cost (TC) incurredbythe cloudservice providers:
Total Cost (TC) = Fixed Cost (FC) + Variable Cost (VC)
Where,we define the followingasperour understanding:
FixedCost = DepreciationCost+Occupancy Cost+ AdministrationCost+ PowerConsumptionCost
at idle mode + NetworkCostat idle mode +DisasterRecoverySite cost
Variable Cost = Powerconsumptionatactive mode +NetworkCostat active mode + Marketingcost
+ otheroverheads
Price Competition
Cloudcompaniesform anoligopolisticmarketandcompete witheachotherbasedonprice
dimension.The NashEquilibriumconceptscanbe usedtostudyprice competition.Allthe companies
inthe cloudmarketofferhomogenousproductswithsome degreeof productdifferentiation.These
differentiationscanbe achievedbybelow characteristics
1. Ease of operations
2. Configurability
3. Performance
4. Reliabilityandsecurityorriskmitigation
5. Customerservice
11
Cloud Pricing Schemes
CloudComputingprovidershave variousoffersbasedonSLAswith adifferentschemeforcalculating
the price.The client’sgoal isto have maximumservice foralow price and provider’sgoal isto
maximumprofit.
There are twotypesof pricingschemeswhichare prevalentinthe Industry.
i. FixedPricing
ii. DynamicPricing
Fixed Pricing
Each service providerdefinesprice forresourcesthatcouldbe prohibitive andthusleadtoa reduced
customerbase and decrease inrevenueandprofits.Fixedpricingincludesapricingmechanismas
pay-per-use pricing,subscriptionandlist price /menuprice.
i. Pay-per-usepricing
a. Subscriptionpricing
b. Hybridpricingmodel
Pay-per-usepricing
Users onlyhave topay for the time or the quantitytheyconsumesonaspecificservice.
PricingschemesforPay-per-USE
a. Subscriptionpricing: Userspay price ona recurringbasisfor the termtheyhave
boughtthe subscriptionforthe service.
b. HybridPricing:Dedicatedserversare providedinadvance andsubscription-
basedpricingisdone inthismodel.
DynamicPricing
The price of the resourcesisdeterminedaccordingtodemandandsupply.Ascomparedtofixed
prices,the dynamicpricingthatreflectsthe real-time supplydemandrelationshiprepresentsamore
promisingcharge strategythatcan betterexploituserpaymentpotentialsandthuslargerprofit
gainsat the cloudprovider.
Market-Dependent Pricing
Customerpaysdependingonthe real-timemarketconditionsandconstraints.
Cloud Pricing Model
Pricingpresentsthe exchangeprocesswhencustomer/enduserpaysforserviceswhichhave been
offered bythe service provider.Some of the mostcommonfactorsaffectingpricinginthe cloud
resourcesare presentedinthe table below.
Here are otherfactors whichaffectthe price inthe cloudresources.These factorscouldbe fixedor
variable.Some of these factorsthatinfluence the price of cloudresourcesare presented
i. MonitoringService
ii. Social Categoryof Customers
iii. Cost of Data Center
iv. User Reputation
v. ProviderReputation
vi. PublicReview
12
vii. SLA (Service LevelAgreement)
viii. Co-CloudUsers
Pricing models
Beloware the pricingmodelswhichhave currentlyimplementedandusedforCloudPricing.
i. Pay-as-you-go:Price issetby service providerandremainsconstant.Thismodel isstatic.
Unfairto the client.He mightpaymore than necessary
ii. Subscription:Price assigned basedonsubscription.Thismodel isstatic.Accordingtothis
model clientsometimescancharge more or less.
iii. Pay-for-resources:Thismodel (static) iscostbased.Offersmaximumutilizationfor
resources.Isfairfor clientandcloudservice providers.
iv. Hybrid pricing: Price changedaccordingto the jobqueue waittimes.Thismodel isfairto
clients.
v. Value-basedpricing:Price assignedonclient’sperceive basis.Thismodel isdynamic.
Fair to producerswhere pricesare setonthe value perceivedbythe client
vi. Cost-basedpricing:In thismodel the priorityistoincrease the profit.Itisnot difficultto
calculate the price.Clientrole isnotprimary.
vii. Competition-basedpricing:Price assignedaccordingtocompetitors’prices.Thismodel
isdynamic.The model isfairto clientsif the price isassignedonthe basisof
competition.
viii. Customer-basedpricing:Price assignedaccordingtowhatclientwantand the needto
pay.This model isfairforclientsif there are takenintoaccount.
Price Discrimination
CloudcompaniesfollowSecond-DegreePrice Discrimination. Forexample,AmazonWebServices,
(AWS) charges$.0023 GB forstoringthe first50 TB/month. AWS charges$0.022 per GB for the next
450 TB / monthand $.0.021 perGB over500 TB / Month. The seconddiscriminationusedinthis
scenarioiscalled“blockpricing”.
13
CloudIndustryfollowsthird-degree discriminationaswell.Theyofferdifferenttypesof servicesfor
differentgroupsandcharge each groupin a differentmanner.Forexample,AWSchargeshas
differentclassesacrosstheirS3Storage service andchargesdifferentlyforeachclass.
Bundling
CloudcompaniesoffervariousserviceslikeInfrastructureasa service,Platformasaservice, and
Software asa service. Fora prospective client,the cloudcompaniesoftenbundle theirservices
togetherlike IAASandSAAStogethercome upwitha differentpricing.Thishelpsthemtosell more
than one service toa potential client.
14
Profit Maximization
In termsof profitmaximization,the bigbrandstendtooutperformthe smallerplayersbyahuge
margin.The reasonis that theyhave a huge difference betweentheirtotal costand total revenue.
Due to the economiesof scale,theydonothave toincur a huge cost forincreasingtheirproduction.
Theirfixedcostsare negligible comparedtotheirvariable costs.The fixedcostsinclude the
hardware and software costsforproduction.The otherexpensesare variable costsincludingthe
propertiesusedforoffices. Similarly,theyoutsource theirnon-core functionstothirdpartiesor
contractors to minimizethe costs.Cloudproductsare capital generatingassetswithhuge cashflow.
Theyneedonlyone-time developmentcosts,butdue totheirsubscription-basedpricing,they
generate aconstant streamof revenuesforyears.Althoughdue toprice rigidity,manytimesthe
firmsare notin a positiontoaltertheirpriceshoweverempirical evidence suggeststhatcustomers
are willingtopayhigherpricesforcloudservicesandwhencomparedtosecurityandperformance,
pricingplaysa minorrole incloudadoption.Infact,the marketperceptionisthatAWSisAmazon’s
cash cow and isapparentlyfundingitswaron rivalssuchas Walmart.
For the smallerfirms,however,the situationisentirelydifferent.Forpricing,theyhave tofollow the
price leaderssuchas AWSand Azure,however,theyare facedtobearhuge costsof productiondue
to inconsistentandlow-qualityhumanresource supply.Also,theydonothave standardized
processesandhence the inefficienciesandexperimentationsleadtohuge sunkcosts.
Consumer Behavior
The publiccloudmarkethas beenonan exponential growthtrajectorysince2013. It is expectedto
hit236 billionUSDby2020 accordingto Forrester’sforecast(Source:analytics-magazine.org).Ina
surveyheldbyIBM, cloudutilizationinacouple of the major techcompaniesrose to78% in2018
from34% in2012. Consumerbehaviorforcloudprimarilyfocusesonthe total costof ownership
(TCO) since the beginning.Enterprisesleveragethe cloudtoreduce theirTCOand accelerate the
pace of developmentandinnovationasopposedtoinvestinginconventional infrastructure.There
are three majortypesof consumersforthe cloud;Organizations,Academicresearchersand
Individuals.Organizationscanfurtherbe dividedintoprivateorganizationsandgovernmental
organizations.Irrespective of the type of consumer,majorreasonbehindchoosingcloudisthe
availabilityof infrastructureandsoftware ondemandata scale whichcustomerwouldlike touse.
However,organizationsandresearchersare primaryconsumersof IaaSandPaaS,while individuals
are the majorconsumersof SaaS. Most commonexamplesof individual cloudconsumptionare
MicrosoftOffice 365 andiCloud.
As the usage of cloudservices- IaaSinparticular,dependsonthe usage patternsof the consumer,it
isimportantto analyze the price elasticityforthe benefitof enterprises.Althoughpricinghasan
impactin selectinganappropriate cloudprovider,someexecutiveswe have interviewedhave given
more weightage toaccessibilityandavailability. Accessibilityisup-time,stabilityandon-demand
service qualitywhile availabilitydependsonthe type of stakeholders.Mostacademicandprivate
enterprisesdonotmindthe local availabilityof datacenters,aslongas latencyand support
requirements are met.However,governmental agenciespreferlocal availabilityof datacentersor
private cloud(on-premises) toadhere todatasecuritypolicies.Basedonourinteractionswithkey
stakeholdersatmultiple organizations,andliterature survey,keyfactorsimpactingclouddecisions
are stability,price andstorage locations.Price discriminationisalsoakeystrategybecause of the
demandvariabilitybetweenpeakhoursandoff-peakhours.Duringthe peakhours,price elasticityof
demandisverylowas organizationsare willingtopayhigherpremiumsasopposedtonon-peak
hourswhenelasticityishigh;creatinganopportunitytoprovide thirdorderprice discrimination.
15
Appendix
Glossary
SLA – Service Level Agreement
SEV – Severity
References
 https://thesai.org/Downloads/Volume7No2/Paper_11-
Pricing_Schemes_in_Cloud_Computing_An_Overview.pdf
 https://www.datacenterknowledge.com/microsoft/why-microsoft-thinks-underwater-data-
centers-may-cost-less
 White Paper:“A Consumer-ProviderCloudCostModel ConsideringVariableCost”byWerner
Mach and ErichSchikuta,Universityof Vienna,ResearchGroupWorkflow Systemsand
TechnologyRathausstrasse 19/9,1010 Wien,Austria
 (IJACSA) International Journal of AdvancedComputerScience andApplications,Vol.7,No.2,
2016 - “PricingSchemesinCloudComputing:AnOverview”
 StrategicManagementof CloudComputingServices:FocusingonConsumerAdoption
Behavior,IEEETRANSACTIONSON ENGINEERINGMANAGEMENT,VOL.61, NO.3, AUGUST
2014
 https://www.businessinsider.in/Amazons-cloud-is-funding-its-war-on-Walmart-rival-
says/articleshow/55380072.cms
 https://aws.amazon.com/s3/pricing/
 http://www.economicsdiscussion.net/oligopoly/top-9-characteristics-of-oligopoly-
market/7342
16
 http://www.yourarticlelibrary.com/oligopoly-market/the-oligopoly-market-example-
types-and-features-micro-economics/9140
 http://www.microeconomicsnotes.com/oligopoly-2/characteristics-and-features-of-
oligopoly-6-answers/15834
 https://www.cbronline.com/opinion/managing-the-risks-of-the-cloud-oligopoly
 https://www.networkworld.com/article/3180473/cloud-price-wars-are-back-
on.html
 https://www.networkworld.com/article/2165077/nonstop-cloud-computing-price-
war--amazon--google-both-drop-rates-again.html
 https://phys.org/news/2017-11-amazon-cloud-computing-approach-rivals-
advertising.html
 https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/tech/internet/wounded-ibm-brings-ad-war-
with-amazon-to-india-after-losing-600-million-
contract/articleshow/26004080.cms?from=mdr
 https://edition.cnn.com/2019/06/13/tech/microsoft-oracle-amazon-cloud/index.html
 https://www.zdnet.com/article/amazons-consumer-business-moves-from-oracle-to-aws-
but-larry-ellisons-wont-stop-talking/

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IIMB MBA(PGPEM) - Managing and Pricing in the cloud

  • 1. Managing and Pricing the Cloud Project Report for Microeconomics course PGPEM-2019 Team members: Nandini Bhavasar 1916007 Kanchan Kalra 1916024 Saurabh Kanaujia 1916025 Shekhar Kanodia 1916026 Gurunathan Subramanyan 1916066 Abhishek Suresh Babu 1916067 Sridharan Vallabhaneni 1916076
  • 2. 2 Table of Contents Project Report Objective & Executive Summary.............................................................................. 4 Project Report Objective ...........................................................................................................4 Executive Summary................................................................................................................... 4 Introduction.................................................................................................................................5 Market Structure.......................................................................................................................... 5 The Oligopoly Market................................................................................................................ 5 Fewfirms.............................................................................................................................. 5 Existence of Price Rigidity/Non-Price Competition..................................................................5 Barriers to Entry of Firms.......................................................................................................5 Advertising............................................................................................................................ 5 Group Behavior..................................................................................................................... 6 Nature of the Product............................................................................................................ 6 Indeterminateness of Demand Curve ..................................................................................... 6 Economies of scale................................................................................................................ 6 The Competitive Market............................................................................................................ 6 SaaS Market Analysis............................................................................................................. 6 Production costs of Cloud Services.................................................................................................8 Rack Cost.............................................................................................................................. 8 Server Cost........................................................................................................................... 8 Onboarding the customers.....................................................................................................9 Support cost......................................................................................................................... 9 Promotion activities.............................................................................................................. 9 Fixed Cost............................................................................................................................. 9 Variable Cost....................................................................................................................... 10 Price Competition....................................................................................................................... 10 Cloud Pricing Schemes......................................................................................................... 11 Dynamic Pricing................................................................................................................... 11 Market-Dependent Pricing................................................................................................... 11 Cloud Pricing Model ............................................................................................................ 11 Pricing models..................................................................................................................... 12 Price Discrimination............................................................................................................. 12 Profit Maximization .................................................................................................................... 14 Consumer Behavior.................................................................................................................... 14 Appendix.................................................................................................................................... 15
  • 4. 4 Project Report Objective & Executive Summary Project Report Objective Cloudtechnologyhasstartedtoreplace the traditional on-premise legacysoftware andtodayalmost all the major businessesare migratingtowardscloud.A surveyconductedbyMcAfee suggeststhat 87% organizationsexperience businessaccelerationbyusing cloudservices. Inthe nascentstagesof growth,securitywasa major concernforcompaniesandhence companiesavoidedmovingtocloud. The surveyalsosuggeststhat52% of the organizationsexperience bettersecurityinthe cloudthan on-premise ITenvironments.Almost36% of the organizationsbelievethattheycanenforce dataloss preventioninthe cloud. Companiesbenefitinnumerouswaysbymigratingtocloudintermsof opportunitycost,reducedITcost,a fastergo-tomarket, businessgrowth,improvedsecurity, expansiontonewmarkets. The followingmicroeconomicsconceptsare coveredinthe report:  Oligopolisticmarketstructure of the cloudindustry  ProductionTheory - Economiesof scale  Cost of Production – Total cost, Fixedcost,Variable cost  ConsumerTheory  PricingwithMarketPower  Profitmaximization Executive Summary The cloud can be broadlysegmentedintothe below three categories: 1. Infrastructure asa service (IaaS)  Hardware service suchas computingpowerandstorage are offeredunderthis category.  Examples –AWS and Azure 2. Software asa service (SaaS)  Online licensedapplicationsare offeredbasedonpayasyou model oron-demand.  Example – MicrosoftOffice 365 3. Platformasa service (PaaS)  PaaS offersplatformforcreatingsoftware thatisdeliveredviainternet.  Example – Force.com(Salesforce)andHeroku For thisreport,the major focushasbeenon the IaaS segment.The IaaScloudindustryisan oligopolisticmarketwhichisdominatedbythree majorplayers –AmazonWebServices(AWS), MicrosoftAzure and Google Cloud.AWSenjoysthe firstmover’sadvantagesince itwaslaunchedin 2006, whereasAzure waslaunchedin2010. Despite thatAzure hasthe privilege of servingmore than 80% of the Fortune 500 companies.Onthe otherhand, AWS isa popularchoice amongst startupssuch as Netflix,Pinterest,SpotifyandAirbnb.Similarly,boththesemajorplayershave tried to segmenttheirmarketsbyincorporatingheterogeneityintermsof focusonhybridcloudsor supportfor thirdpartyapplications.
  • 5. 5 Introduction IT expenditure hasbeenamajorcost forall the majorenterprises.The majorcomponentsof this expense are computationcostandstorage costalongwithIT consultancyandservicingcost. Historicallythe companieswere forced topurchase the physical hardware whichnotonlyincreased the costs but alsocreatednon-liquidassets.Cloudcomputingprovidesacost-effective,efficientand flexible systemof managingthe ITservicesforthe companies.The conceptof on-demandresources has made iteasy forsmall companiesandstartupstoscale up theircore servicesbyleveragingthe featuresof cloudcomputing.Itisa win-winsituationforall where the producersurplusand consumersurplusincreasedsimultaneouslydue to anincrease inthe consumerbase and the reductionof IT expenditure. Market Structure The Oligopoly Market Oligopoly comprisesof few large sellers (but more than two) of the homogeneous or differentiated products. Cloudbusinessfitsthe definitionof ‘oligopoly’veryclosely.Givenbelow are some of the keyfeatures of oligopoly and how cloud business mimics the behavior given in each definition of feature. Few firms In Oligopoly, there are number of firms in market but only few are large competitive players, which cater to the significantamountof the total marketdemand.Those few playerstryto manipulate the price and offerings to dominate in market. The cloud market too has few players who has a significant market share and power. As per some industry reports, Amazon Web Services (AWS) has 34 percent market share, followed by Microsoft with 14 per cent and the rest is by other players like Google, IBMand Alibaba. Existence of Price Rigidity/ Non-Price Competition InOligopoly,the competitive playersdoesn’tdeviate toomuchfromitspricingplansincereductionin price may trigger other players to drop prices which can lead to price war and thereby hurt all producers / service providers. In April 2013, Amazon and Google entered into price war (Three days after Google announces a 4% price reduction, Amazon shoots back with a 26% drop). And then again in March 2017, Cloud price wars was back on when Amazon responded to Google’s flexible cloud pricing announcement. Barriers to Entry of Firms The hurdle of entry and exit in the cloud computing industry is a difficult one to cross. Major companies such as Google, Amazon and Microsoft has invested so much in the infrastructure to provide cloud services that they have “first mover advantage”. Any new entrant has to access the marketavailability,the patentsissuedtothesecompanies,costrequiredtobuildupthe infrastructure before making an entry into this business. One must have a strategic businessanalysis, investment requirements,patents,knowledge assets,etc.,andthe competitiveedgetocompetewiththese cloud provider giants. Advertising In oligopoly,since the majorplayers cannotreduce the price asit couldleadto price war, one wayto manipulate/ capture market is via advertising.The competitive firms keep a tab about the moves of
  • 6. 6 each other and make corresponding policy changes. This sometimes leads to aggressive advertising campaign to beat the other players in the market. As perarticle in Nov,2017 in Seattle Times,Amazonneverbelievedinadvertisinguntil afterAmazon elbowedoutIBMto wina high profile contractto provide data centerservicesto CIA,IBM plastered buses in Las Vegas with ads for its services as visitors gathered for Amazon's 2013 "re: Invent" conference.Afteracouple of yearsspenttestingthewaterwithlimitedadvertisingexperiments,AWS decided to strike back this year with its first major brand campaign Amazon even redesigned the AWS logo, leaving behind the orange cluster of blocks and moving to new logo of AWS letters with a smiling arrow on top. Group Behavior The firms in an industry exhibit varied behavior ranging from competitiveness to collaboration to capture market and it is required to understand this group behavior of the firms. For an oligopolisticfirmthe behaviorof firmishighlyunpredictablecomparedtoothermarketforms. Because theytendtocollude tomaximizetheirprofitsorsometimestheirobjectivesmaybe different which may lead to exhibit seemingly un-rational behavior. In June 2019, MicrosoftAzure and oracle clouddecidedtolinktheircloudcomputingservicestotake on Amazon who is the currently the market leader in cloud offerings. Nature of the Product The firmsunderoligopolymay produce homogeneousordifferentiatedproduct.If the firmsproduce a homogeneousproduct,the industryiscalleda pure or perfectoligopolyandif the firmsproduce a differentiated product, the industry is called differentiated or imperfect oligopoly. In cloudbusiness,the productofferingsare bothhomogeneousaswell asdifferentiated.Few players offersimilarservices(sameDB,OSpackage) whereasfewtrytomarketdifferentiatedproductsuchas Oracle by advertising about its self-driving database and making claims that even Amazon runs on Oracle database. Indeterminateness of Demand Curve In oligopoly, firms keep changing the prices / quantity and thereby their demand curve is indeterminate.Kinkeddemandcurve isone of the hypothesistoexplainthe price rigidity.The kinkin demand curve occurs when the elastic prevailing price becomes inelastic all of sudden. Economies of scale The economiesof scale isdefinitelyamajorphenomenoninthe cloudindustry,especiallyforthe IaaS and PaaS segment.The majorplayerssuchas AWSand Azure have scaledtheirproductionto such a level thattheycandouble theirproductioneasilywithoutincurringamajorincrease incosts. Thisis due to the acquisitionof ahuge pool of talenteddevelopersfromthe IvyLeague institutes. The smallerplayersonthe otherhandstruggle withhighratesof attritionwhichnotonlyincreases theirvariable costsbutalsopreventsthemfromleveragingthe learningcurve advantages. The Competitive Market SaaS Market Analysis Software asa service marketisclosettoa perfectlycompetitive marketwhere there ismany service providerswhosometimesprovide homogeneousproducts.Forinstance,the online texteditors, online photoeditors,online pdf converters.Theydonothave monopolypowersandhence are not
  • 7. 7 able to fix price andappearto be price takers.Rathertheyare dependentonthe online advertisementsforgeneratingrevenues. Similarly,the entryandexittobarriersare notveryhighfor the SaaS markets where anyone can launcha software as a service withminimumexpenses.The fixedcostinvolvesjustthe costof basic hardware suchas laptopsandthe variable costincludesthe subscriptioncosttocloudservicessuch as AWS forscalingthe applications. Likewise,the humanresourcecostisalsoa variable costfor the SaaS market. Giventhe ease of entryand exitfromthe SaaS market,there existmultiple playersinthe initial phases.Hence mostof the startups intheirinitial stagesof seed/angel fundingformapart of the perfectlycompetitive SaaSmarket. Also,inthe SaaS market,the profitsearnedinthe longtermare almostzero if the startupsfail to scale up or differentiatetheirproducts.Mostof the companiesorfirmstendtoexitif theyare not able to meetthe variable costandhence the shutdownrule appliestothismarket.These daysthe investorsalsolookingforuniteconomicswhere theydonotwantto considertheirinvestmentasa sunkcost and hence putpressure onthe firmsto differentiate theirproductsandmove awayfrom the perfectlycompetitive marketstowardsoligopolisticmarketswhere theycanhave some monopolypowersdue totheirdifferentiatedproductsanddue tothe relativelyinelasticdemand.
  • 8. 8 Production costs of Cloud Services The motivationtostudythe productioncostsof Cloudservicesarisesbecause the finalpricesforthe Cloudofferingsmade bythe Cloudgiantsmajorlydependonthe investmentsandthe coststhey’re incurringinorderto make these servicesavailable.Hence,before deepdivingintothe pricingof the CloudServices,thissectionprovidesabrief onthe productioncostsinvolved. Production costs of Cloud Services Rack Cost The physical storage costsof hostingthe machinesformthe majorchunkof the productioncosts.This includes the real estate costs of hosting the data centers, to have it powered continuously, the networkbandwidthandthe investmentsmade tomaintainthe physicalmachinesinthe datacenters. Another major contributor to the productions costs is due to the replication – This arises from the necessity to maintain redundant copies for Business Continuity Plans and also to provide improved performancesbygeo-replicateddataacrossthe globe.Andmostimportantly,coolingcostsplayavital role here.Itisa commonknowledgethatmajorspendinadatacentergoestowardsthe coolingcosts andgiantslike Microsofthave startedinvestinginUnder-waterdatacentertomainlybenefitfromthe reduced cooling cost amongst other perks. Server Cost This section covers the hardware costs of the machines involved along with the costs to keep the machines patched with the latest updates. We should also note that in any given data center the varietyof machinesSKUsbeinghostedvariesgreatlyandhence the maintenance costsare also high.
  • 9. 9 Given how frequently we see newer generation computing systems coming into the Software landscape, it is nearly impossible for any data center to be able to run on a homogenous machine function. Hence, the added overhead of maintaining machines spanning across a wide spectrum becomes unavoidable. The network costs of having these machines be online and always available also fall into this bucket of costs incurred by the Cloud Service providers. Inadditiontothe above,some of the othernoteworthyspendsof aCloudService providerare below. Onboarding the customers The Cloud service providers also spend significant efforts and resources to provide a seamless experience toonboardnewcustomersfromnon-cloudplatformsorfromothercloudserviceproviders onto their products. Support cost Every major Cloud service provider today does compulsorilyprovide customer support for all issues thata userfacesinthe cloudservicesitoffers.The SLAsvaryfromrangesspanningfromunder4hours for SEV 0 issuesto 4 daysfor issueswithlowerseverity.Thiscontinuoussupportalsoentailsa lot of monetary investments from the service provider. Promotion activities Like anyothercompetitiveindustry,the cloudserviceprovidersalsoinvestinpromotingtheirproducts viathe online advertisingorthroughthe variouseducational programstheyrunin-ordertoinfusethe usage of their products into students or techies in the industry. Although,notaverycleardistinctioncanbe drawnbetweenthese,inthe shortrun - the rackcost and server cost can be demarcated as the fixed costs and others such as Power consumption, network bandwidth, and marketing are the variable costs. Costs Overview Fixed Cost The depreciationcostis the most commonand significantcostsincurredon IT assetslike the servers and hard disks. This depreciation is due to the technological advancements and lifespan of these assets. An occupancy cost is the real estate area required to deploy the racks and servers. An administration cost is again incurred in administrating, maintaining the servers and hard disks. The
  • 10. 10 power consumption cost includes the cost to power the servers, hard disks, cooling agents like air conditioners that are continuously engaged during idle time. The cost incurred to setup near- shore/customer sites, Disaster Recovery Sites that ensures high availability, Network Infrastructure cost for network gears like routers and switches all contribute to the fixed cost. Variable Cost The powerconsumedbycoolingagents,serversandharddisksat an active state contributes significantlytowardsvariable costs.Additionally,the costsincurredinbranding,marketingandother overheadscanbe consideredasVariable cost. If we were toput an equationtothe total cost (TC) incurredbythe cloudservice providers: Total Cost (TC) = Fixed Cost (FC) + Variable Cost (VC) Where,we define the followingasperour understanding: FixedCost = DepreciationCost+Occupancy Cost+ AdministrationCost+ PowerConsumptionCost at idle mode + NetworkCostat idle mode +DisasterRecoverySite cost Variable Cost = Powerconsumptionatactive mode +NetworkCostat active mode + Marketingcost + otheroverheads Price Competition Cloudcompaniesform anoligopolisticmarketandcompete witheachotherbasedonprice dimension.The NashEquilibriumconceptscanbe usedtostudyprice competition.Allthe companies inthe cloudmarketofferhomogenousproductswithsome degreeof productdifferentiation.These differentiationscanbe achievedbybelow characteristics 1. Ease of operations 2. Configurability 3. Performance 4. Reliabilityandsecurityorriskmitigation 5. Customerservice
  • 11. 11 Cloud Pricing Schemes CloudComputingprovidershave variousoffersbasedonSLAswith adifferentschemeforcalculating the price.The client’sgoal isto have maximumservice foralow price and provider’sgoal isto maximumprofit. There are twotypesof pricingschemeswhichare prevalentinthe Industry. i. FixedPricing ii. DynamicPricing Fixed Pricing Each service providerdefinesprice forresourcesthatcouldbe prohibitive andthusleadtoa reduced customerbase and decrease inrevenueandprofits.Fixedpricingincludesapricingmechanismas pay-per-use pricing,subscriptionandlist price /menuprice. i. Pay-per-usepricing a. Subscriptionpricing b. Hybridpricingmodel Pay-per-usepricing Users onlyhave topay for the time or the quantitytheyconsumesonaspecificservice. PricingschemesforPay-per-USE a. Subscriptionpricing: Userspay price ona recurringbasisfor the termtheyhave boughtthe subscriptionforthe service. b. HybridPricing:Dedicatedserversare providedinadvance andsubscription- basedpricingisdone inthismodel. DynamicPricing The price of the resourcesisdeterminedaccordingtodemandandsupply.Ascomparedtofixed prices,the dynamicpricingthatreflectsthe real-time supplydemandrelationshiprepresentsamore promisingcharge strategythatcan betterexploituserpaymentpotentialsandthuslargerprofit gainsat the cloudprovider. Market-Dependent Pricing Customerpaysdependingonthe real-timemarketconditionsandconstraints. Cloud Pricing Model Pricingpresentsthe exchangeprocesswhencustomer/enduserpaysforserviceswhichhave been offered bythe service provider.Some of the mostcommonfactorsaffectingpricinginthe cloud resourcesare presentedinthe table below. Here are otherfactors whichaffectthe price inthe cloudresources.These factorscouldbe fixedor variable.Some of these factorsthatinfluence the price of cloudresourcesare presented i. MonitoringService ii. Social Categoryof Customers iii. Cost of Data Center iv. User Reputation v. ProviderReputation vi. PublicReview
  • 12. 12 vii. SLA (Service LevelAgreement) viii. Co-CloudUsers Pricing models Beloware the pricingmodelswhichhave currentlyimplementedandusedforCloudPricing. i. Pay-as-you-go:Price issetby service providerandremainsconstant.Thismodel isstatic. Unfairto the client.He mightpaymore than necessary ii. Subscription:Price assigned basedonsubscription.Thismodel isstatic.Accordingtothis model clientsometimescancharge more or less. iii. Pay-for-resources:Thismodel (static) iscostbased.Offersmaximumutilizationfor resources.Isfairfor clientandcloudservice providers. iv. Hybrid pricing: Price changedaccordingto the jobqueue waittimes.Thismodel isfairto clients. v. Value-basedpricing:Price assignedonclient’sperceive basis.Thismodel isdynamic. Fair to producerswhere pricesare setonthe value perceivedbythe client vi. Cost-basedpricing:In thismodel the priorityistoincrease the profit.Itisnot difficultto calculate the price.Clientrole isnotprimary. vii. Competition-basedpricing:Price assignedaccordingtocompetitors’prices.Thismodel isdynamic.The model isfairto clientsif the price isassignedonthe basisof competition. viii. Customer-basedpricing:Price assignedaccordingtowhatclientwantand the needto pay.This model isfairforclientsif there are takenintoaccount. Price Discrimination CloudcompaniesfollowSecond-DegreePrice Discrimination. Forexample,AmazonWebServices, (AWS) charges$.0023 GB forstoringthe first50 TB/month. AWS charges$0.022 per GB for the next 450 TB / monthand $.0.021 perGB over500 TB / Month. The seconddiscriminationusedinthis scenarioiscalled“blockpricing”.
  • 13. 13 CloudIndustryfollowsthird-degree discriminationaswell.Theyofferdifferenttypesof servicesfor differentgroupsandcharge each groupin a differentmanner.Forexample,AWSchargeshas differentclassesacrosstheirS3Storage service andchargesdifferentlyforeachclass. Bundling CloudcompaniesoffervariousserviceslikeInfrastructureasa service,Platformasaservice, and Software asa service. Fora prospective client,the cloudcompaniesoftenbundle theirservices togetherlike IAASandSAAStogethercome upwitha differentpricing.Thishelpsthemtosell more than one service toa potential client.
  • 14. 14 Profit Maximization In termsof profitmaximization,the bigbrandstendtooutperformthe smallerplayersbyahuge margin.The reasonis that theyhave a huge difference betweentheirtotal costand total revenue. Due to the economiesof scale,theydonothave toincur a huge cost forincreasingtheirproduction. Theirfixedcostsare negligible comparedtotheirvariable costs.The fixedcostsinclude the hardware and software costsforproduction.The otherexpensesare variable costsincludingthe propertiesusedforoffices. Similarly,theyoutsource theirnon-core functionstothirdpartiesor contractors to minimizethe costs.Cloudproductsare capital generatingassetswithhuge cashflow. Theyneedonlyone-time developmentcosts,butdue totheirsubscription-basedpricing,they generate aconstant streamof revenuesforyears.Althoughdue toprice rigidity,manytimesthe firmsare notin a positiontoaltertheirpriceshoweverempirical evidence suggeststhatcustomers are willingtopayhigherpricesforcloudservicesandwhencomparedtosecurityandperformance, pricingplaysa minorrole incloudadoption.Infact,the marketperceptionisthatAWSisAmazon’s cash cow and isapparentlyfundingitswaron rivalssuchas Walmart. For the smallerfirms,however,the situationisentirelydifferent.Forpricing,theyhave tofollow the price leaderssuchas AWSand Azure,however,theyare facedtobearhuge costsof productiondue to inconsistentandlow-qualityhumanresource supply.Also,theydonothave standardized processesandhence the inefficienciesandexperimentationsleadtohuge sunkcosts. Consumer Behavior The publiccloudmarkethas beenonan exponential growthtrajectorysince2013. It is expectedto hit236 billionUSDby2020 accordingto Forrester’sforecast(Source:analytics-magazine.org).Ina surveyheldbyIBM, cloudutilizationinacouple of the major techcompaniesrose to78% in2018 from34% in2012. Consumerbehaviorforcloudprimarilyfocusesonthe total costof ownership (TCO) since the beginning.Enterprisesleveragethe cloudtoreduce theirTCOand accelerate the pace of developmentandinnovationasopposedtoinvestinginconventional infrastructure.There are three majortypesof consumersforthe cloud;Organizations,Academicresearchersand Individuals.Organizationscanfurtherbe dividedintoprivateorganizationsandgovernmental organizations.Irrespective of the type of consumer,majorreasonbehindchoosingcloudisthe availabilityof infrastructureandsoftware ondemandata scale whichcustomerwouldlike touse. However,organizationsandresearchersare primaryconsumersof IaaSandPaaS,while individuals are the majorconsumersof SaaS. Most commonexamplesof individual cloudconsumptionare MicrosoftOffice 365 andiCloud. As the usage of cloudservices- IaaSinparticular,dependsonthe usage patternsof the consumer,it isimportantto analyze the price elasticityforthe benefitof enterprises.Althoughpricinghasan impactin selectinganappropriate cloudprovider,someexecutiveswe have interviewedhave given more weightage toaccessibilityandavailability. Accessibilityisup-time,stabilityandon-demand service qualitywhile availabilitydependsonthe type of stakeholders.Mostacademicandprivate enterprisesdonotmindthe local availabilityof datacenters,aslongas latencyand support requirements are met.However,governmental agenciespreferlocal availabilityof datacentersor private cloud(on-premises) toadhere todatasecuritypolicies.Basedonourinteractionswithkey stakeholdersatmultiple organizations,andliterature survey,keyfactorsimpactingclouddecisions are stability,price andstorage locations.Price discriminationisalsoakeystrategybecause of the demandvariabilitybetweenpeakhoursandoff-peakhours.Duringthe peakhours,price elasticityof demandisverylowas organizationsare willingtopayhigherpremiumsasopposedtonon-peak hourswhenelasticityishigh;creatinganopportunitytoprovide thirdorderprice discrimination.
  • 15. 15 Appendix Glossary SLA – Service Level Agreement SEV – Severity References  https://thesai.org/Downloads/Volume7No2/Paper_11- Pricing_Schemes_in_Cloud_Computing_An_Overview.pdf  https://www.datacenterknowledge.com/microsoft/why-microsoft-thinks-underwater-data- centers-may-cost-less  White Paper:“A Consumer-ProviderCloudCostModel ConsideringVariableCost”byWerner Mach and ErichSchikuta,Universityof Vienna,ResearchGroupWorkflow Systemsand TechnologyRathausstrasse 19/9,1010 Wien,Austria  (IJACSA) International Journal of AdvancedComputerScience andApplications,Vol.7,No.2, 2016 - “PricingSchemesinCloudComputing:AnOverview”  StrategicManagementof CloudComputingServices:FocusingonConsumerAdoption Behavior,IEEETRANSACTIONSON ENGINEERINGMANAGEMENT,VOL.61, NO.3, AUGUST 2014  https://www.businessinsider.in/Amazons-cloud-is-funding-its-war-on-Walmart-rival- says/articleshow/55380072.cms  https://aws.amazon.com/s3/pricing/  http://www.economicsdiscussion.net/oligopoly/top-9-characteristics-of-oligopoly- market/7342
  • 16. 16  http://www.yourarticlelibrary.com/oligopoly-market/the-oligopoly-market-example- types-and-features-micro-economics/9140  http://www.microeconomicsnotes.com/oligopoly-2/characteristics-and-features-of- oligopoly-6-answers/15834  https://www.cbronline.com/opinion/managing-the-risks-of-the-cloud-oligopoly  https://www.networkworld.com/article/3180473/cloud-price-wars-are-back- on.html  https://www.networkworld.com/article/2165077/nonstop-cloud-computing-price- war--amazon--google-both-drop-rates-again.html  https://phys.org/news/2017-11-amazon-cloud-computing-approach-rivals- advertising.html  https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/tech/internet/wounded-ibm-brings-ad-war- with-amazon-to-india-after-losing-600-million- contract/articleshow/26004080.cms?from=mdr  https://edition.cnn.com/2019/06/13/tech/microsoft-oracle-amazon-cloud/index.html  https://www.zdnet.com/article/amazons-consumer-business-moves-from-oracle-to-aws- but-larry-ellisons-wont-stop-talking/