Service Quality and Profit Control in Utility Computing Service Life Cycles

Abstract

Utility Computing is one of the most discussed business models in the context of Cloud Computing. Service providers are more and more pushed into the role of utilities by their customer's expectations. Subsequently, the demand for predictable service availability and pay-per-use pricing models increases. Furthermore, for providers, a new opportunity to optimise resource usage offers arises, resulting from new virtualisation techniques. In this context, the control of service quality and profit depends on a deep understanding of the representation of the relationship between business and technique.

This research analyses the relationship between the business model of Utility Computing and Service-oriented Computing architectures hosted in Cloud environments. The relations are clarified in detail for the entire service life cycle and throughout all architectural layers. Based on the elaborated relations, an approach to a delivery framework is evolved, in order to enable the optimisation of the relation attributes, while the service implementation passes through business planning, development, and operations.

Related work from academic literature does not cover the collected requirements on service offers in this context. This finding is revealed by a critical review of approaches in the fields of Cloud Computing, Grid Computing, and Application Clusters. The related work is analysed regarding appropriate provision architectures and quality assurance approaches.

The main concepts of the delivery framework are evaluated based on a simulation model. To demonstrate the ability of the framework to model complex pay-per-use service cascades in Cloud environments, several experiments have been conducted. First outcomes proof that the contributions of this research undoubtedly enable the optimisation of service quality and profit in Cloud-based Service-oriented Computing architectures.