Patent ID: 7711594

Claim:
A method for determining a price to bill a customer for a resource, said method being performed by execution of program code on a processor of a computer system, said program code being stored on a computer readable storage medium, said method comprising: identifying an amount C i of the resource committed to the customer during a first billing period; 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; billing the price P i to the customer for the first billing period; 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; determining that the number of denied requests D exceeds a predetermined threshold; responsive to said determining 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; 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 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.