MSP Billing & Licensing

Monetize cloud services with clear usage, margins, and control

A cloud business only scales if billing and licensing scale with it. whitesky is designed for MSP operations: multi-tenant usage tracking, customer isolation, reseller enablement, and integration points for invoicing and licensing workflows.

whitesky is delivered as a managed service today (installation, updates, monitoring and lifecycle management), with a software edition rolling out in 2026.

Usage-based metering (built for MSPs)

whitesky provides a foundation for transparent, auditable usage reporting across tenants and locations, enabling:

  • Clear consumption reporting per customer and per service
  • Quotas and limits aligned to service plans
  • Chargeback/showback models for internal IT or resellers
  • Cost visibility across multiple cloud locations

This supports both public cloud offerings and private managed cloud contracts.

Invoicing & billing automation

Depending on your operating model, whitesky can support:

  • Automated invoice generation based on usage
  • Export/reporting flows for your existing billing stack
  • Multi-tenant billing separation for resellers (VCO model)
  • Consistent billing across multiple locations

SPLA and licensing workflows (Octopus integration)

Many MSPs use Octopus to automate SPLA and licensing workflows. whitesky enhances that approach with a secure, low-friction data pipeline that keeps licensing transparent and operationally consistent.

Delivery model: included with Meneja (managed service)

When you consume whitesky via the Meneja platform (managed service), you do not need to operate your own Octopus installation. whitesky runs an Octopus environment as part of the service and uses it to process licensing workflows and integrate results into billing.

If required (for example for auditability or operational transparency), customers can be granted access to their own tenant within Octopus.

Software edition consideration (Cloud Enablers)

As whitesky becomes available as software, Cloud Enablers who choose to run the Meneja platform themselves will need their own Octopus installation if they want to use this SPLA workflow feature set.

Nightly license discovery (without customer network access)

whitesky performs a nightly scan of Windows virtual machines to detect installed Microsoft products. The scan is orchestrated from the host side and uses the QEMU guest agent inside the virtual machine to gather the required software inventory data.

The resulting scan output is then exported and transported to Octopus as files. This means Octopus does not need direct access to customer networks — an important security benefit.

With this approach you can:

  • scan Windows machines located in private customer networks
  • avoid opening inbound paths from Octopus to tenant environments
  • keep licensing workflows centralized while maintaining strict network boundaries

Automated SPLA analysis and billing integration

Once received, Octopus analyzes the scan data to determine which Microsoft licenses apply and what needs to be reported/charged.

whitesky then integrates the resulting licensing charges into the billing flow so Microsoft licensing appears automatically alongside resource usage (compute, storage, bandwidth, etc.) for the end customer.

Proactive customer notifications to avoid invoice surprises

When the nightly scan detects newly installed licensable software, whitesky can automatically notify the customer’s operational contact by email. This makes customers aware that additional licensed software has been installed and will be charged for.

The goal is to prevent surprises at invoicing time — especially for Microsoft products that can materially impact monthly costs.

Reseller enablement (VCO-ready)

For MSP ecosystems and channel models, whitesky supports a reseller-oriented operating model:

  • Resellers can have their own portal experience (white-label)
  • Customer isolation and delegated administration
  • Consistent service catalog and policies
  • Reporting boundaries per reseller and per customer

This allows you to scale distribution without scaling your internal platform engineering.

Governance and auditability

Billing and licensing depend on trust in the numbers. whitesky supports governance through:

  • Role-based access control (RBAC)
  • Tenant boundaries and clear ownership
  • Operational visibility across customers and locations
  • Usage reporting designed to be explainable and auditable

Typical use cases

MSPs use whitesky billing & licensing capabilities to:

  • Launch branded public cloud offerings with usage-based pricing
  • Offer private managed cloud with predictable contracts + usage reporting
  • Run reseller programs (VCO model) with clean separation
  • Integrate SPLA processes via Octopus and reduce operational overhead
  • Provide showback/chargeback for enterprise IT customers

Next steps