Architecting the Industrial Internet

Consumption models

The most common and simplest pricing model is subscription-based pricing, in which the customer pays for access on a periodic basis or based on the subscription time frame. Most hosted and cloud services provide elastic and scalable provisioning and de-provisioning of capacity used in computing, storage, network, and so on, on an as-needed basis. Billing for cloud services follows similar flexible options, letting the subscriber pay for what they use or consume, thus allowing them to quickly adjust to changing demands for production due to changing customer demands. 

Subscription models offer predictability, but it can be difficult to expand their capacity. Consumption pricing makes it easier to expand or contract the digital ...