Description
BACKGROUND
As an increasing number of applications and services are being made available over networks such as the Internet, an increasing number of content, application, and/or service providers are turning to technologies such as cloud computing. Cloud computing, in general, is an approach to providing access to electronic resources through services, such as Web services, where the hardware and/or software used to support those services is dynamically scalable to meet the needs of the services at any given time. A user or customer typically will rent, lease, or otherwise pay for access to resources through the cloud, and thus does not have to purchase and maintain the hardware and/or software to provide access to these resources. In many cases, the costs of running a Web site, application, or other offering using these resources can become significant when many users utilize these offerings. Conventional approaches to funding these offerings can be somewhat limited, and in some cases can result in the offering no longer being available when an owner of a resource cannot afford to maintain an offering. Further, sometimes a customer only needs a resource for a specific task or period of time, and conventional approaches to obtaining the resources whereby a user must obtain an account, set up a resource usage schedule, and perform other such tasks can decrease the efficiency of various processes.
This link has the full patent for anyone who loves details:
http://www.google.com/patents/US8719131
