Electronic Data Systems Corp. last week announced plans to meter computer usage in its hosting centers in order to bill customers based on use rather than on flat fees.
EDS, which is implementing Ejasent Inc.s MicroMeasure software, is building on its computing-on-demand initiative and will offer the new service to EDS hosting clients.
The service is another building block in creating the infrastructure necessary to support true pay-as-you-go computing, according to Al Rasteiro, global offering director for midrange services at EDS, in Sacramento, Calif.
Compared with IBM Global Services, the new capabilities enabled by the MicroMeasure software should have broader appeal, according to analyst Adria Ferguson at Giga Information Group Inc., in Santa Clara, Calif.
EDS, of Plano, Texas, is also evaluating Ejasents UpScale Data Center software, which can monitor an applications computing demands and dynamically increase or decrease computing resources to meet those requirements.
The deal with Ejasent, of Mountain View, Calif., comes on the heels of EDS agreement to license Opsware System 3 data center automation software from Opsware Inc., formerly Loudcloud Inc., in Sunnyvale, Calif. EDS intends to automate service delivery and application management using Opsware first in its Web hosting centers and eventually across 50,000 servers in 14 major data centers and 140 client-owned and regional data centers. With the Ejasent software, EDS will provide metering and integrated billing for Solaris servers as well as Linux, IBM AIX and Windows NT servers. The service will go live by years end in a handful of EDS Web hosting centers.