Patent ID: 8055555

Claim:
A method of providing data storage resources as a service, comprising: connecting to data storage resources in a datacenter controlled by a service provider; enabling the service provider to allocate the data storage resources to one or more customers; establishing contracts between the customers and the service provider to indicate allocation of the data storage resources by customer; maintaining information about the datacenter and customers to whom the service provider has allocated the data storage resources, wherein maintaining comprises producing configuration information for the connected data storage resources and producing customer information in a table that associates the customers with the data storage resources allocated to those customers; tracking usage of the allocated data storage resources by customer based on the configuration information and the customer information in the table to produce usage information; assigning multiple levels of ownership to a billable device associated with the allocated data storage resources based on the contracts, wherein the multiple levels of ownership comprise ownership by a service provider including assigning responsibility of administration of the billable device and ownership by a customer of the service provider; using the table to indicate ownership of the allocated data storage resources by customer based on the contracts, an entry in the table comprising: a first field indicating the billable device; a second field indicating equipment associated with the billable device in the first field; and a third field indicating ownership of the billable device in the first field; and using the usage information to generate billing information associated with the billable device.