Overview
ISO/IEC TR 23613:2020 is a Technical Report that provides a sample set of cloud service metering elements and billing modes. Published in 2020 by ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 38, it clarifies how cloud services can be measured and billed across the three cloud capability types: infrastructure, platform, and application. The report explains the billing functional component (metering, rating, pricing schedules and invoicing), describes common billing modes, and gives practical examples of metering elements and metering units.
Key topics and requirements
- Billing functional components: Defines metering as the measurement of consumption, rating as application of pricing schedules to metered data, and invoicing based on rated charges.
- Billing modes: Two fundamental modes are described:
- Subscription billing - charges based on contractual/periodic indicators.
- Usage billing - charges based on actual measured consumption. Modes can be combined (e.g., subscription up to a limit, then usage billing).
- Metering elements and units: Sample metering elements are grouped by cloud capability type and include unit suggestions (e.g., Byte, Second, bits/second, N/A for pure counts).
- Infrastructure examples: CPU core count, memory capacity (Byte), storage capacity (Byte), operating time (Second), IOPS, throughput (Byte/second), IP address counts, virtual firewall throughput.
- Platform examples: message service instance count, cache size (Byte), instance running time (Second), processed requests, database connection count.
- Application examples: API call number/frequency, dataset size (Byte), running time (Second), tenant count.
- Metering sampling guidance: Recommendations for sample collection, specifying sampling time/contents/methods/accuracy, using collection and billing tools and providing sampling and billing data.
- Reference scope: The document references ISO/IEC 17788 (overview & vocabulary) and ISO/IEC 17789 (reference architecture) and aligns with other cloud taxonomy work (e.g., ISO/IEC TS 23167).
Applications and users
ISO/IEC TR 23613:2020 is practical for:
- Cloud service providers (CSPs) designing transparent metering and billing schemes.
- Cloud service customers (CSCs) evaluating and comparing provider billing practices and contracts.
- Cloud architects and DevOps teams setting up monitoring and billing-aware resource usage.
- Billing system vendors, auditors and procurement teams who need consistent metering definitions for invoicing, SLAs and cost analysis.
- Regulators and standards bodies seeking harmonized terminology and examples.
Related standards
- ISO/IEC 17788 - Cloud computing: Overview and vocabulary
- ISO/IEC 17789 - Cloud computing: Reference architecture
- ISO/IEC TS 23167 - (referenced for resource descriptions)
Keywords: ISO/IEC TR 23613:2020, cloud metering, cloud billing, metering elements, billing modes, CSP, CSC, subscription billing, usage billing, metering unit.