Settlement and capacity planning in multi-service provider infrastructures

Service providers are increasingly turning to federated approaches to meet customer demand while limiting the risk of large-scale computing infrastructure investments. In such models, service providers could meet the demands of peak processing periods or specialized application environments by offloading to a partner provider. While a number of distributed systems initiatives, including Grid computing, rely on such cooperatives, models for effective capacity planning and settlement in such environments has largely been ignored,In this paper, we develop a model for settlement and capacity planning in a multi-provider computing cooperative. We introduce two pricing tariffs - linear and burstable pricing - that are commonly used in the industry, and compare their relative merits.