Patent ID: 8458005
Filing Date: 2013-06-04
Classification: G06Q

Abstract:
1. A system for managing on-demand service offerings, wherein a service provider provides resources to a collection of service distributors, and said service distributors distribute said resources to end users, said service offerings including an on-demand feature where the service provider provides some of said resources to the service distributors on demand of the service distributors, said system comprising: a memory device having embodied therein information relating to said resources; a service provider processor in communication with said memory device and configured for announcing upfront capacity pricing, an on-demand premium structure, and an on-demand exercise structure, said on-demand premium structure representing the immediate cost to the service distributor for the right to use the on-demand feature at some random point any time in the future up to a specified date, and said on demand exercise structure representing the price the service provider charges a service distributor upon the invocation of the on-demand feature; and a service distributor processor in communication with said service provider processor and configured for committing to upfront capacity (Q) and to units of on-demand options (q); wherein said service provider processor is further configured for provisioning a number of resources to the collection of service distributors; and the provisioning of resources is done by using the equation: where and D: customer's stochastic IT requirement with pdf f(D) and cdf F(D); W: traditional purchase price=unit cost of firm order C: unit cost of option, x: “On-Demand” exercise price, m: cost to the service provider for one unit of capacity, s: maintenance cost per unit time per unit capacity incurred by the provider Y: IT/Hosting capacity O=Q+q.