Microsoft apparently wants to give its cloud customers a unique new pricing structure, setting the rate based on the level of performance a customer is willing to pay for, Priceline.com style. Two Microsoft Research employees last year applied for a patent for “performance-based pricing for cloud computing,” as InformationWeek reported today. 

Two Microsoft employees have applied for a patent on a cloud pricing scheme based on the customers’ ability to set the performance levels of a cloud service. Customers would be guaranteed the designated level of performance, based on the quoted price. The patent application illustrates how guaranteed performance levels may play a larger role in future use of cloud services than they do currently. A common criticism of on-demand pricing, such as that used by Amazon Web Services, is that it provides an hour of service time without any guarantee of how well the system will run.