Microsoft: Now Offering Pay As You Go Computing
By Alexis • Jan 3rd, 2009 • Category: UncategorizedMicrosoft has recently launched its pay as go computing scheme under which the company has decided to charge the customer for the software and hardware they use. The company will measure the amount of computing power, in order to charge the customer under a pre-paid or post-paid plan.
This is like a mobile phone service subscription where the user pays per call or SMS. The only difference is that the users will be now charged according to their PC usage. This is beneficial for the user as he won’t have to purchase software, like the entire Microsoft Office 2007 professional edition. Instead he can simply subscribe for that software and pay depending on the usage. However, the company also admits that in the long run users will end up paying more than the original purchase cost of the software. So obviously this only makes sense for people who use the software or computer relatively infrequently, otherwise buying both out front would be the more economical option.
According to Microsoft, “A user may buy a multi-core processor with a significant amount of memory and advanced video support for gaming applications that are only used on the weekend, while the user’s day-in, day-out activities may involve little more than word processing or web-browsing.” The pay as you go computing plan will charge the users after considering their disk storage space, memory usage and processor cores used. This plan will benefit both the supplier and the consumers. The company says, “The user is able to migrate the performance level of the computer as needs change over time, while the supplier can develop a revenue stream business that may actually have higher value than the one-time purchase model currently practiced.”
Tags for this article: computing, software, microsoft
