Today, Zuora is announcing a subscription billing model for cloud computing, called Z-Commerce for the Cloud.  Zuora, a SaaS startup company that offers online services to manage and automate customer subscriptions and payments, and its impressive backing that are pretty cool if you ask me. The startup signed over $1 billion in contracted subscription revenue in the first quarter of its new fiscal year that ended late April.

The Zuora cloud billing platform aims to alleviate the need for online businesses to develop their own billing systems, especially to handle recurring payments like those associated with subscriptions.

Z-Billing and Z-Payments products make it fast and easy to launch new products, scale operations, and automate recurring billing and subscription payments in one solution.  Here are a couple functions:

• Offers robust functionality to meter, price, and bill for customer usage
• Is offered in four editions to suit every cloud business model
• Manages the subscription lifecycle, including purchases, renewals, upgrades, and cancellations
• Provides an interface that can be used by your sales and service reps, or self-service by your customers
• Can be used to transact directly with your customers or offered as an “in-a-box” solution for your partners
• Includes a Blueprint for the Cloud of best practice considerations when launching your cloud business.

Meter
With a multitude of pre-built cloud units of measure and integration with leading infrastructure vendors, Zuora meters and rates usage of any computing resource, tracking and charging for precisely what your customers use.
Price
With over 20 new cloud pricing models and the ability to configure pricing and packaging rapidly, Zuora supports every cloud business model—from reservation and location-based pricing to free trials, upgrades, and sophisticated product bundles.
Bill
Z-Commerce for the Cloud automates the creation of detailed, line-item invoices for your customers as well as the processing of payments against them. Zuora also includes cloud-based metrics and reports, optimizing your business decision making.

Zuora will automatically create itemized invoices for your customers on a scheduled, recurring basis. In addition, Zuora tracks payments against those invoices, handling the complexities of credit balances, overpayments, failed payments, refunds, and chargebacks.

Four Editions
Z-Commerce for the Cloud is offered in four editions, tailored to address the four business models in the cloud:

For More Info Visit The Official Site of Zuora