LAUSR

Cloud computing has rapidly transformed ICT industry and numerous cloud providers offer multiple flavors of Infrastructure-as-a-Service solutions (IaaS), aiming at meeting customer demand within a competitive landscape. In addition, cloud users seek the optimal cloud service and usually end-up choosing solutions based mainly on price. Pricing strategy aims to satisfy both parties and depends on many factors, reflecting both cloud provider drive-for-profit and user drive for seeking value-for-money solutions. This article proposes a twofold approach in order to capture the viewpoints of cloud providers and users on the pricing strategy of IaaS services, based on structural-equation-model and pairwise comparison, respectively. Five categories of cloud attributes are considered, and IaaS functional and nonfunctional operation is presented. The contribution of each category to the shaping of final price is examined. The conclusions drawn have important bearing on how the pricing strategy of cloud providers is mainly in agreement with the user point-of-view.