Offer service concepts

To use the Offer service API effectively, you should understand several key concepts.

Offering

An offering is a configuration of products that a user can purchase for a certain price. It is a collection of products, product characteristics, and product prices.

Product

A product is a tangible or intangible item that is sold to a customer.

Product characteristic

A product characteristic provides additional information about a product. It follows the format Characteristic key : Characteristic value. Product characteristics are mainly intended to be used to configure information from external applications that drive product configuration.

Commit grid

A commit grid is a matrix that indicates the discounts that are available per offering and length of commitment.

Rackspace commit grids can be classified into the following types.

Standard commit grid

A standard commit grid offers pre-defined discounts based on the length of the customer’s commitment. By default, Rackspace applies a standard commit grid to new accounts.

Custom commit grid

A custom commit grid offers customized discounts based on a customer’s request. A payload for the custom commit grid is created and posted to the Offer Service with a unique ID. A customer account that is associated with a specific geographic region (such as USA or UK) can have only one commit grid applied to it.

Volume grid

A volume grid is a matrix that indicates the discounts that can be applied based on the volume of cloud services usage. A volume grid is only used when an overflow occurs, such as when a customer exceeds the monthly maximum amount (maxAmount) that is associated with the commitment.

Rackspace has the following types of volume discount grids:

Standard volume grid

A standard volume grid offers pre-defined discounts based on the volume of cloud services usage. If an overflow occurs, Rackspace applies a standard volume grid to the account by default.

Custom volume grid

A custom volume grid offers customized volume discounts. Custom volume grids are further classified into the following types:

• Preset grid: Offers customized volume discounts.
• Zero-preset grid: No discount is applied to the account. This scenario occurs only when a customer waives a volume discount in favor of a better custom commit grid discount.