Robust pricing for cloud computing

Fuente: arXiv
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Autori principali: Bergemann, Dirk, Deb, Rahul
Natura: Preprint
Pubblicazione: 2025
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author Bergemann, Dirk
Deb, Rahul
author_facet Bergemann, Dirk
Deb, Rahul
contents We study the robust sequential screening problem of a monopolist seller of multiple cloud computing services facing a buyer who has private information about his demand distribution for these services. At the time of contracting, the buyer knows the distribution of his demand of various services and the seller simply knows the mean of the buyer's total demand. We show that a simple "committed spend mechanism" is robustly optimal: it provides the seller with the highest profit guarantee against all demand distributions that have the known total mean demand. This mechanism requires the buyer to commit to a minimum total usage and a corresponding base payment; the buyer can choose the individual quantities of each service and is free to consume additional units (over the committed total usage) at a fixed marginal price. This result provides theoretical support for prevalent cloud computing pricing practices while highlighting the robustness of simple pricing schemes in environments with complex uncertainty.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2502_07168
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Robust pricing for cloud computing
Bergemann, Dirk
Deb, Rahul
Theoretical Economics
We study the robust sequential screening problem of a monopolist seller of multiple cloud computing services facing a buyer who has private information about his demand distribution for these services. At the time of contracting, the buyer knows the distribution of his demand of various services and the seller simply knows the mean of the buyer's total demand. We show that a simple "committed spend mechanism" is robustly optimal: it provides the seller with the highest profit guarantee against all demand distributions that have the known total mean demand. This mechanism requires the buyer to commit to a minimum total usage and a corresponding base payment; the buyer can choose the individual quantities of each service and is free to consume additional units (over the committed total usage) at a fixed marginal price. This result provides theoretical support for prevalent cloud computing pricing practices while highlighting the robustness of simple pricing schemes in environments with complex uncertainty.
title Robust pricing for cloud computing
topic Theoretical Economics
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2502.07168