Verizon Brings Pay-As-You-Go Pricing to Government

When you think about the hallmarks of cloud computing -- on-demand service, resource pooling, elasticity, scalability and the like -- it’s easy to overlook how you pay for those cloud services.

Federal agencies often still use a fixed pricing model, where an agency purchases an allotment of cloud services and pays for them, whether they are fully used or not. However, in the spirit of true cloud computing, it appears cloud vendors are coming around to offering government customers the same pay-as-you-go approach popular among commercial customers.

Verizon Enterprise Solutions, buoyed by demand from existing federal customers, announced last week it is offering a new consumption model for federal customers who use its Enterprise Cloud platform. The instance-based virtual machines offering allows customers to “utilize cloud computing resources on-demand and pay for only the capacity used,” according to a blog post by Verizon’s Kevin Irland.

“Public sector demand for our cloud offerings continues to gain momentum,” said Michael Maiorana, senior vice president of public sector markets at Verizon Enterprise Solutions. “By introducing new options such as instance-based virtual machines and removing potential barriers to cloud adoption, we are meeting the IT requirements of our public sector clients and providing them with the flexibility and choice they need to meet their operational objectives.”

The pay-as-you-go option makes sense for customers that have seasonal demand -- think about national park websites or the IRS during tax season -- and test and development teams that sometimes require short durations of high performance.

“It truly is on-demand and pay-as-you-go,” said Terri Ertlmeier, product manager at Verizon Enterprise Solutions. “You only pay for the capacity you use.” 

(Image via 3Dstock/ Shutterstock.com)