Patent ID: 7917452

Claim:
A computer program product for determining a price to bill a customer for a resource, said computer program product comprising: a computer readable tangible storage device; first program instructions for identifying an amount C i of the resource committed to the customer during a first billing period; second program instructions for determining a price P i for the first billing period according to P i =F(C i )+G(U F −C i ), wherein U F is an amount of the resource provided to the customer during the first billing period; third program instructions for billing the price P i to the customer for the first billing period; fourth program instructions for determining a number of denied requests D consisting of a number of requests for the resource which were made by the customer during the first billing period for an amount of the resource in excess of C i and were denied; fifth program instructions for determining that the number of denied requests D exceeds a predetermined threshold; sixth program instructions for, in response to the fifth program instructions having determined that the number of denied requests D exceeds the predetermined threshold, increasing the amount C i to an amount C i+1 of the resource committed to the customer during a second billing period subsequent to the first billing period; sixth program instructions for determining a price P i+1 to the customer for the second period according to P i+1 =F(C i+1 )+G(U S −C i+1 ), wherein U S is an amount of the resource provided to the customer during the second billing period; and seventh program instructions for billing the price P i+1 to the customer for the second billing period, wherein F(C) is a monotonically increasing function of C, wherein G(U−C) is a monotonically increasing function of U−C, wherein C denotes an amount of the resource committed to the customer during any billing period, and wherein U denotes an amount of the resource provided to the customer during said any billing period, wherein the first program instructions, the second program instructions, the third program instructions, the fourth program instructions, the fifth program instructions, the sixth program instructions, and the seventh program instructions are stored on the computer readable tangible storage device.