Computer service vendors provide a wide range of services, and an increasing number of companies are becoming consumers of the various services. Services available today include telecom (telecommunications, datacenter network services, mobile/edge communications services), computational services (compute), both application layer and infrastructure layer, and data storage (storage).
Unfortunately, billing standards and methods differ greatly between different vendors and between different types of services. Different types of services may be billed by flat-rate, by the day, week, or month, by the byte (or multiple thereof), or on a per-minute basis. Other factors include data speed and tiered service levels.
These varying billing methods cause unnecessary duplication, overhead, and other management issues.
There is, therefore, a need in the art for a system, process and data format for unified billing for computing services.
USPTO Backgrounds
USPTO Backgrounds