An analysis of resource costs in a public computing grid

Public resource computing depends on the availability of computing resources that have been contributed by individuals. The amount of resources can be increased by incentivizing resource providers through payment for resources. However, there are costs associated with providing resources for public grid computing. Without an understanding of these costs, it is impossible for a provider to judge if the payment is sufficient to overcome those costs. In this paper, we present a provider cost model that considers all resource provider costs including opportunity costs, future-value costs, penalties, utility costs, and fixed costs. This model helps set a cost structure that a resource provider can use to determine whether it is profitable to participate in a public resource computing market.