Patent ID: 8589312

Claim:
An apparatus, comprising: a processor; a computer-readable storage medium, coupled top the processor; and logic stored on the computer-readable storage medium and executed on the processor for: generating a servers parameter corresponding to a plurality of servers allocated to provisioning of a computing resource; generating an end-of-life parameter, N, corresponding to an expected duration of time for the provisioning of the computing resource; dividing the expected duration of time into a plurality of discreet intervals, T 0 through T N ; compiling a number of times an application has accessed the computing resource with respect to beginnings of a contiguous number of the plurality of discreet intervals; defining a random variable, W T1 , wherein W T1 represents a number of servers of the plurality of servers provisioning the application at a particular time T 1 of the plurality of discreet intervals; calculating a probability that the application is provisioned on one computing resource at the particular time T 1 ; calculating a charge per unit parameter based upon the random variable and the probability; and generating a charge for provisioning of the computing resource based upon the charge per unit parameter and a count of a number of servers providing the computing resource at each of the plurality of discreet intervals.