Custom metering pricing for AMI products with AWS Marketplace Metering Service

With the AWS Marketplace Metering Service, you can modify your software to send metering records to an endpoint to capture usage. You can select a usage category and define up to 24 dimensions for that one category. These dimensions are metered once per hour, aggregated, and charged against a price plan that you define. As a seller, you must determine which dimension you want to use. After the AMI is published, you will not be able to change it. The following sections provide information about AWS Marketplace Metering Service.

Topics

• Metering service concepts
• Pricing your software
• Adding your product to AWS Marketplace
• Modifying your software to use the Metering Service
• Vendor-metered tagging (Optional)
• Configuring custom metering
• Configuring custom metering for AMI products with AWS Marketplace Metering Service

Metering service concepts

Before you use the AWS Marketplace Metering Service, note the following important service concepts:

• Usage Category – Any software product priced through the use of the Metering Service is categorized according to one usage category, which determines the appropriate way to charge customers. Usage categories include but aren't limited to:

  • Users – A defined set of permissions associated with a single identifier. This category is appropriate for software in which a customer’s users connect to the software directly (for example, for customer-relationship management or business intelligence reporting).

  • Hosts – Any server, node, instance, endpoint, or other part of a computing system. This category is appropriate for software that monitors or scans many customer-owned instances (for example, performance or security monitoring).

  • Data – Storage or information, measured in MB, GB, or TB. This category is appropriate for software that manages stored data or processes data in batches.

  • Bandwidth – Measured in Mbps or Gbps. This category is appropriate for software that allows customers to specify an amount of bandwidth to provision.

  • Unit – Unit of measurement; see the examples described next.

• Usage Unit – A software product's specific usage unit corresponds to the selected usage category. This usage unit describes the unit your software will charge on. Examples include:

  • NodesHrs (corresponding to the Hosts category)

  • UserHrs (corresponding to the User category)

  • GBStored (corresponding to the Data category)

• Consumption – Software products priced through the use of the Metering Service charge for consumption in one of three ways:

  • Provisioned – The software allows customers to configure a specific amount of resources for use (for example, number of users or a fixed amount of bandwidth). Each hour, customers pay for what they have provisioned.

  • Concurrent – The software allows any number of distinct hosts or users to connect to the software. Each hour, customers pay based on the number of hosts or users who accessed the software.

  • Accumulated – The software allows customers to use any amount of data, either processed or stored. Each hour, customers pay for the aggregated amount.

• Pricing – Software products priced through the use of the Metering Service must specify either a single price or define up to 24 dimensions, each with their own price. Details about the pricing options include:

  • Single dimension – This is the simplest pricing option. Customers pay a single price per resource unit per hour, regardless of size or volume (for example, $0.014 per user per hour, or $0.070 per host per hour).

  • Multiple dimensions – This pricing option is appropriate when the selected usage category varies along multiple axes. For example, for host monitoring, a different price could be set depending on the size of the host. Or, for user-based pricing, a different price could be set based on the type of user (for example, admin, power user, and read-only user).

• Metering – All usage is recorded as a metering event, once each hour. Your software must be configured to send the appropriate dimension and usage amount to the AWS Marketplace Metering Service.

  • Allocations – Optionally, you may distribute the usage into allocations by properties that you track. These allocations are represented as tags to the buyer. The tags allow the buyer to view their costs split into usage by tag. For example, if you charge by the user, and users have a "Department" property, you could create usage allocations with tags that have a key of "Department", and one allocation per value. This approach doesn't change the price, dimensions, or the total usage that you report. However, it allows your customer to view their costs by categories appropriate to your product.

Pricing your software

When pricing your software with the AWS Marketplace Metering Service, you must first decide on a usage category and how it will be consumed. The service supports six distinct pricing scenarios. You must select only one of these for your product:

• Provisioned user (per hour)

• Concurrent user (per hour)

• Provisioned host (per hour)

• Concurrent host (per hour)

• Provisioned bandwidth (per hour)

• Accumulated data (per hour)

Next, you must decide how to price the selected usage category:

• Single price

• Multiple dimensions (up to 24)

Adding your product to AWS Marketplace describes how to provide a customer-friendly description of your dimension and pricing.

Example: Provisioned bandwidth with nonlinear pricing

Imagine you offer network appliance software. You choose to bill by provisioned bandwidth. For your usage category, select Bandwidth. In addition to charging by bandwidth, you want to charge a different price as buyers scale up. You can define multiple dimensions within the bandwidth category. You can define a distinct price for 25 Mbps, 100 Mbps, and 1 Gbps.

Example: Concurrent hosts with multiple dimensions

Imagine you offer software that monitors other Amazon EC2 instances. You choose to bill by the number of hosts that are being monitored. For your usage category, select Host. In addition to charging by host, you want to charge for the extra value for monitoring larger hosts. You can use multiple dimensions within the host category. You can define a distinct price for micro, small, medium, large, x-large, 2XL, 4XL, and 8XL instances. Your software is responsible for mapping each particular host to one of your defined dimensions. Your software is responsible for sending a separate metering record for each dimension of your usage category if applicable.

Adding your product to AWS Marketplace

To take advantage of the Metering Service, you must create a new product for AWS Marketplace to list. If your product is already on the AWS Marketplace, you will need to decide whether the new AWS Marketplace Metering Service product will be made available in addition to your current product, or if it will replace your current product as the only version available to new users. If you choose replacement, the existing product will be removed from the AWS Marketplace so that it is no longer available for new buyers. Existing customers will continue to have access to their old product and instances, but they can migrate to the new product at their convenience. The new product must meter usage to the AWS Marketplace Metering Service, as described in Modifying your software to use the Metering Service.

After you have your AMI, follow the standard process to share and scan your AMI using the self-service tool. In addition to using the template available on the management portal, fill out the product load form and upload it to start the ingestion process.

Use the following definitions to complete the fields of the Product Load Form for the AWS Marketplace Metering Service. On the Product Load Form, these fields are labeled as Flexible Consumption Pricing (FCP) to differentiate them from hourly and monthly priced products.

• Title – If you already have a product on AWS Marketplace and you're adding the same product with the AWS Marketplace Metering Service, include the FCP category and dimension in parentheses to differentiate them (for example, “PRODUCT TITLE (Data)”).

• Pricing Model –From the dropdown list, choose Usage.

• FCP Category – The category in which customers are charged for paid products with a Usage pricing component. From the dropdown list, choose Users, Hosts, Data, or Bandwidth.

• FCP Unit –The unit of measurement on which customers are charged for paid products with a Usage pricing component. Options will appear in the dropdown list based on the FCP category you selected. The following table lists the valid units for each category.

  Category	Valid units
  Users	UserHrs
  Hosts	HostHrs
  Data	MB, GB, TB
  Bandwidth	Mbps, Gbps

• FCP Dimension Name – The name used when sending metering records by calling the MeterUsage operation. It is visible in billing reports. However, because it isn't external-facing, the name doesn't need to be user-friendly. The name can be no more than 15 characters and can only include alphanumeric and underscore characters. After you set the name and make the product public, you can't change it. Changing the name requires a new AMI.

• FCP Dimension Description – The customer-facing statement that describes the dimension for the product. The description (can be no more than 70 characters and should be user-friendly. Examples of descriptions include: Administrators per hour and Per Mbps bandwidth provisioned. After the product is published, you can't change this description.

• FCP Rate – The software charge per unit for this product. This field supports three decimal places.

Notes:

• You don't need to fill out hourly and annual pricing fields.

• Free trial and annual pricing aren't compatible.

• Products that use multiple AMIs and the Clusters and AWS Resources feature can't use the AWS Marketplace Metering Service.

• Price, instance type, or AWS Region change will follow the same process as other AWS Marketplace products.

• Products with the AWS Marketplace Metering Service can't be converted to other pricing models such as hourly, monthly, or Bring Your Own License (BYOL).

• AWS Marketplace recommends adding IAM policy information in your usage instructions or document.

• You can include up to 24 FCP dimensions in total. Once created and published, you can't modify existing dimensions, but you can add new ones (up to the limit of 24).

If you have questions, contact the AWS Marketplace Seller Operations team.

Modifying your software to use the Metering Service

You will need to modify your software to record customer usage, send hourly usage reports to the Metering Service, and handle new failure modes. The software operates independently of pricing, but the software will need to know about the usage category, how it's consumed, and any dimensions.

Measuring consumption

Your software must determine how much of the selected usage category and which dimensions the customer has consumed. This value will be sent, once each hour, to the Metering Service. In all cases, it's assumed that your software has the ability to measure, record, and read consumption of resources for the purpose of sending it on an hourly basis to the Metering Service.

For provisioned consumption, this will typically be read from the software configuration as a sampled value, but might also be a maximum configured value, recorded each hour. For concurrent consumption, this might be either a periodic sample or a maximum value recorded each hour. For accumulated consumption, this will be a value that is accumulated each hour.

For pricing on multiple dimensions, multiple values must be measured and sent to the Metering Service, one per dimension. This requires your software to be programmed or configured with the known set of dimensions when you provide the AMI. The set of dimensions can't change after a product is created.

For each pricing scenario, the following table describes recommended ways for measuring consumption each hour.

Scenario	How to measure
Provisioned user	Current number of provisioned users (sampled). -OR- Maximum number of provisioned users (seen that hour).
Concurrent user	Current number of concurrent users (sampled). -OR- Maximum number of concurrent users (seen that hour). -OR- Total number of distinct users (seen that hour).
Provisioned host	Current number of provisioned hosts (sampled). -OR- Maximum number of provisioned hosts (seen that hour).
Concurrent host	Current number of concurrent hosts (sampled). -OR- Maximum number of concurrent hosts (seen that hour). -OR- Total number of distinct hosts (seen that hour).
Provisioned bandwidth	Current provisioned bandwidth setting (sampled). -OR- Maximum provisioned bandwidth (seen that hour).
Accumulated data	Current GB of data stored (sampled). -OR- Maximum GB of data stored (seen that hour). -OR- Total GB of data added or processed that hour. -OR- Total GB of data processed that hour.

Vendor-metered tagging (Optional)

Vendor-metered tagging helps Independent Software Vendors (ISVs) give the buyer more granular insight into their software usage and can help them perform cost allocation.

To tag a buyer's software usage, you need to determine how costs are allocated. First ask your buyers what they want to see in their cost allocation. Then you can split the usage across properties that you track for the buyer’s account. Examples of properties include Account ID, Business Unit, Cost Centers, and other relevant metadata for your product. These properties are exposed to the buyer as tags. Using tags, buyers can view their costs split into usage by the tag values in their AWS Billing Console (https://console.aws.amazon.com/billing/). Vendor-metered tagging doesn't change the price, dimensions, or the total usage that you report. It allows your customer to view their costs by categories appropriate to your product.

In a common use case, a buyer subscribes to your product with one AWS account. The buyer also has numerous users associated with the same product subscription. You can create usage allocations with tags that have a key of Account ID, and then allocate usage to each user. In this case, buyers can activate the Account ID tag in their Billing and Cost Management console and analyze individual user usage.

Seller experience

Sellers can aggregate the metering records for resources with the same set of tags instead of aggregating usage for all resources. For example, sellers can construct the metering record that includes different buckets of UsageAllocations. Each bucket represents UsageQuantity for a set of tags, such as AccountId and BusinessUnit.

In the following diagram, Resource 1 has a unique set of AccountId and BusinessUnit tags, and appears in the Metering Record as a single entry.

Resource 2 and Resource 3 both have the same AccountId tag, 2222, and the same BusinessUnit tag, Operations. As a result, they're combined into a single UsageAllocations entry in the Metering Record.

Sellers can also combine resources without tags into a single UsageAllocation with the allocated usage quantity and send it as one of the entries in UsageAllocations.

Limits include:

• Number of tags – 5

• Size of UsageAllocations (cardinality) – 2,500

Validations include:

• Characters allowed for the tag key and value – a-zA-Z0-9+ -=._:\/@

• Maximum tags across UsageAllocation list – 5

• Two UsageAllocations can't have the same tags (that is, the same combination of tag keys and values). If that's the case, they must use the same UsageAllocation.

• The sum of AllocatedUsageQuantity of UsageAllocation must equal the UsageQuantity, which is the aggregate usage.

Buyer experience

The following table shows an example of the buyer experience after a buyer activates the AccountId and BusinessUnit vendor tags.

In this example, the buyer can see allocated usage in their Cost Usage Report. The vendor-metered tags use the prefix “aws:marketplace:isv”. Buyers can activate them in the Billing and Cost Management, under Cost Allocation Tags, AWS-generated cost allocation tags.

The first and last rows of the Cost Usage Report are relevant to what the Seller sends to the Metering Service (as shown in the Seller experience example).

Cost Usage Report (Simplified)
ProductCode	Buyer	UsageDimension	UsageQuantity	aws:marketplace:isv:AccountId	aws:marketplace:isv:BusinessUnit
xyz	111122223333	Network: per (GB) inspected	70	2222	Operations
xyz	111122223333	Network: per (GB) inspected	30	3333	Finance
xyz	111122223333	Network: per (GB) inspected	20	4444	IT
xyz	111122223333	Network: per (GB) inspected	20	5555	Marketing
xyz	111122223333	Network: per (GB) inspected	30	1111	Marketing

For a code example, see MeterUsage with usage allocation tagging (Optional)

Configuring custom metering

For more information about working with AWS Marketplace Metering Service, see Configuring custom metering for AMI products with AWS Marketplace Metering Service.