Skip to main content
Log in

Cloud service selection using cloud service brokers: approaches and challenges

  • Review Article
  • Published:
Frontiers of Computer Science Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

Cloud computing users are faced with a wide variety of services to choose from. Consequently, a number of cloud service brokers (CSBs) have emerged to help users in their service selection process. This paper reviews the recent approaches that have been introduced and used for cloud service brokerage and discusses their challenges accordingly. We propose a set of attributes for a CSB to be considered effective. Different CSBs’ approaches are classified as either single service or multiple service models. The CSBs are then assessed, analyzed, and compared with respect to the proposed set of attributes. Based on our studies, CSBs with multiple service models that support more of the proposed effective CSB attributes have wider application in cloud computing environments.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Similar content being viewed by others

References

  1. Mell P, Grance P. The NIST Definition of Cloud Computing. NIST Special Publication 800–146, 2011

    Google Scholar 

  2. Wadhwa B, Jaitly A, Hasija N, Suri B. Cloud service brokers: addressing the new cloud phenomenon. In: Rajsingh E B, Bhojan A, Peter J D, eds. Informatics and Communication Technologies for Societal Development, Springer International Publishing, 2015, 29–40

    Google Scholar 

  3. Badidi E. A cloud service broker for SLA-based SaaS provisioning. In: Proceedings of International Conference on Information Society. 2013, 61–66

    Google Scholar 

  4. Shin Y R, Huh E N. Optimization for reasonable service price in broker based cloud service environment. In: Proceedings of the 4th International Conference on Innovative Computing Technology. 2014, 115–119

    Google Scholar 

  5. Buyya R, Ranjan R, Calheiros R N. InterCloud: utility-oriented federation of Cloud computing environments for scaling of application services. In: Proceedings of the 10th International Conference on Algorithms and Architectures for Parallel Processing. 2010, 13–31

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  6. Ferrer A J, Hernández F, Tordsson J, Elmroth E, Ali-Eldin A, Zsigri C, Sirvent R, Guitart J, Badia R M, Djemame K, Ziegler W. OPTIMIS: a holistic approach to cloud service provisioning. Future Generation Computer Systems, 2012, 28(1), 66–77

    Article  Google Scholar 

  7. Simarro J L L, Moreno-Vozmediano R, Montero R S, Llorente I M. Dynamic placement of virtual machines for cost optimization in multicloud environments. In: Proceedings of International Conference on High Performance Computing and Simulation. 2011, 1–7

    Google Scholar 

  8. Liu F, Tong J, Mao J, Bohn R, Messina J, Badger L, Leaf D. NIST Cloud Computing Reference Architecture. NIST Special Publication 500, 2011

    Google Scholar 

  9. Grozev N, Buyya R. Inter-cloud architectures and application brokering: taxonomy and survey. Software: Practice and Experience, 2014, 44(3): 369–390

    Google Scholar 

  10. Sanchez F D, Al Zahr S, Gagnaire M, Laisne J P, Marshall I J. CompatibleOne: bringing cloud as a commodity. In: Proceedings of IEEE International Conference on Cloud Engineering. 2014, 397–402

    Google Scholar 

  11. Bhattacharya A, Choudhury S. Service insurance: a new approach in cloud brokerage. In: Chaki R, Saeed K, Choudhury S, et al, eds. Applied Computation and Security Systems. Springer International Publishing, 2015, 39–52

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  12. Song H, Bae C S, Lee J W, Youn C H. Utility adaptive service brokering mechanism for personal cloud service. In: Proceedings of Military Communications Conference, 2011, 1622–1627

    Google Scholar 

  13. Somasundaram T S, Govindarajan K, Rajagopalan M, Rao S M. A broker based architecture for adaptive load balancing and elastic resource provisioning and deprovisioning in multi-tenant based cloud environments. In: Proceedings of International Conference on Advances in Computing. 2012, 561–573

    Google Scholar 

  14. Ngan L D, Kanagasabai R. Owl-s based semantic cloud service broker. In: Proceedings of the 19th IEEE International Conference on Web Services. 2012, 560–567

    Google Scholar 

  15. Whaiduzzaman M, Haque M N, Rejaul Karim Chowdhury M, Gani A. A study on strategic provisioning of cloud computing services. The Scientific World Journal, 2014, 1–16

    Google Scholar 

  16. Sun L, Dong H, Hussain F K, Hussain O K, Chang E. Cloud service selection: state-of-the-art and future research directions. Journal of Network and Computer Applications, 2014, 45: 134–150

    Article  Google Scholar 

  17. Subha M, Banu MU. A survey on QoS ranking in cloud computing. International Journal of Emerging Technology and Advanced Engineering, 2014, 4(2): 482–488

    Google Scholar 

  18. Jula A, Sundararajan E, Othman Z. Cloud computing service composition: a systematic literature review. Expert Systems with Applications, 2014, 41(8): 3809–3824

    Article  Google Scholar 

  19. Chao K M, Anane R, Chen J H, Gatward R. Negotiating agents in a market-oriented grid. In: Proceedings of the 2nd IEEE/ACM International Symposium on Cluster Computing and the Grid. 2002, 436

    Google Scholar 

  20. Kertész A, Kecskemeti G, Brandic I. An interoperable and selfadaptive approach for SLA-based service virtualization in heterogeneous Cloud environments. Future Generation Computer Systems, 2014, 32: 54–68

    Article  Google Scholar 

  21. Achar R, Thilagam P S. A broker based approach for cloud provider selection. In: Proceedings of International Conference on Advances in Computing, Communications and Informatics. 2014, 1252–1257

    Google Scholar 

  22. Schaffer H E. X as a service, cloud computing, and the need for good judgment. IT professional, 2009, 11(5): 4–5

    Article  Google Scholar 

  23. Ray B K, Khatua S, Roy S. Negotiation based service brokering using game theory. In: Proceedings of Applications and Innovations in Mobile Computing Conference. 2014, 1–8

    Google Scholar 

  24. Simarro J L L, Aniceto I S, Moreno-Vozmediano R, Montero R S, Llorente I M. A cloud broker architecture for multi-cloud environments. In: Proceedings of Large Scale Network-Centric Distributed Systems Conference. 2013, 359–376

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  25. Brock M, Goscinski A. Enhancing Cloud Computing Environments using a Cluster as a Service. New York: Wiley Press, 2011

    Book  Google Scholar 

  26. Parhi M, Pattanayak B K, Patra M R. A multi-agent-based framework for cloud service description and discovery using ontology. In: Jain L C, Patnaik S, Ichalkaranje N, eds. Intelligent Computing, Communication and Devices, Springer International Publishing, 2015, 337–348

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  27. Lee Y T, Wu C S. A quality-based semantic service broker using reachability indexes. In: Proceedings of IEEE World Forum on Internet of Things. 2014, 277–282

    Google Scholar 

  28. Anastasi G F, Carlini E, Coppola M, Dazzi P. QBROKAGE: a genetic approach for QoS cloud brokering. In: Proceedings of the 7th IEEE International Conference on Cloud Computing. 2014, 304–311

    Google Scholar 

  29. Pawluk P, Simmons B, Smit M, Litoiu M, Mankovski S. Introducing STRATOS: a cloud broker service. In: Proceedings of the 5th IEEE International Conference Cloud Computing. 2012, 891–898

    Google Scholar 

  30. Amato A, DiMartino B, Venticinque S. A Distributed Cloud Brokering Service. Informatica, 2015, 26(1): 1–15

    Article  Google Scholar 

  31. Haresh M, Kalady S, Govindan V. Agent based dynamic resource allocation on federated clouds. In: Proceedings of IEEE Conference on Recent Advances in Intelligent Computational Systems. 2011, 111–114

    Google Scholar 

  32. Li X, Ma H, Zhou F, Yao W. T-Broker: a trust-aware service brokering scheme for multiple cloud collaborative services. IEEE Transactions on Information Forensics and Security, 2015, 10(7): 1402–1415

    Article  Google Scholar 

  33. Sundareswaran S, Squicciarini A, Lin D. A brokerage-based approach for cloud service selection. In: Proceedings of the 5th IEEE International Conference on Cloud Computing. 2012, 558–565

    Google Scholar 

  34. Lim E, Thiran P. Communication of technical QoS among cloud brokers. In: Proceedings of IEEE International Conference on Cloud Engineering. 2014, 403–409

    Google Scholar 

  35. Garg S K, Versteeg S, Buyya R. SMICloud: A framework for comparing and ranking cloud services. In: Proceedings of the 4th IEEE International Conference on Utility and Cloud Computing. 2011, 210–218

    Google Scholar 

  36. Tordsson J, Montero R S, Moreno-Vozmediano R, Llorente I M. Cloud brokering mechanisms for optimized placement of virtual machines across multiple providers. Future Generation Computer Systems, 2012, 28(2): 358–367

    Article  Google Scholar 

  37. Anastasi G F, Carlini E, Coppola M, Dazzi P. Smart cloud federation simulations with CloudSim. In: Proceedings of the 1st ACM Workshop on Optimization Techniques for Resource Management in Clouds. 2013, 9–16

    Google Scholar 

  38. Ye Z, Zhou X, Bouguettaya A. Genetic algorithm based QoS-aware service compositions in cloud computing. In: Proceedings of the 16th International Conference on Database systems for advanced applications. 2011, 321–334

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  39. Li X, Yang Y. Trusted data acquisition mechanism for cloud resource scheduling based on distributed agents. China Communication, 2011, 8(6): 108–116

    Google Scholar 

  40. Smit M, Pawluk P, Simmons B, Litoiu M. A web service for cloud metadata. In: Proceedings of the 8th IEEE World Congress Services. 2012, 361–368

    Google Scholar 

  41. Shoham Y, Leyton-Brown K. Multiagent Systems: Algorithmic, Game-Theoretic, and Logical Foundations. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008

    Book  MATH  Google Scholar 

  42. Li X, Zhou F. PG-TRUST: a self-adaptive and scalable trust computing model for large-scale peer-to-peer grid computing. International Journal of Software Engineering and Knowledge Engineering, 2011, 21(5): 667–692

    Article  Google Scholar 

  43. Yoon K P, Hwang C L. Multiple attribute decision making: an introduction. Sage Publications, 1995

    Book  Google Scholar 

  44. Siegel J, Perdue J. Cloud services measures for global use: the service measurement index (SMI). In: Proceedings of SRII Global Conference. 2012, 411–415

    Google Scholar 

  45. Saaty T L. How to make a decision: the analytic hierarchy process. European Journal of Operational Research, 1990, 48(1): 9–26

    Article  MathSciNet  MATH  Google Scholar 

  46. Kalepu S, Krishnaswamy S, Loke SW. Verity: a QoS metric for selecting Web services and providers. In: Proceedings of the 4th Conference on Web Information Systems Engineering Workshops. 2003, 131–139

    Google Scholar 

  47. AlZain M, Pardede E, Soh B, Thom J. Cloud computing security: from single to multi-clouds. In: Proceedings of the 45th International Conference on System Science. 2012, 5490–5499

    Google Scholar 

  48. Vukolić M. The Byzantine empire in the intercloud. ACM SIGACT News, 2010, 41(3): 105–111

    Article  Google Scholar 

  49. Alhamad M, Dillon T, Chang E. Conceptual SLA framework for cloud computing. In: Proceedings of the 4th IEEE International Conference on Digital Ecosystems and Technologies. 2010, 606–610

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  50. Sotomayor B, Montero R S, Llorente I M, Foster I. Virtual infrastructure management in private and hybrid clouds. IEEE Internet Computing, 2009, 13(5): 14–22

    Article  Google Scholar 

  51. Aslam M A, Auer S, Shen J, Herrmann M. Expressing business process models as OWL-S ontologies. In: Proceedings of Business Process Management Workshops. 2006, 400–415

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  52. Gonzalez-Castillo J, Trastour D, Bartolini C. Description logics for matchmaking of services. In: Proceedings of Workshop on Applications of Description Logics. 2002

    Google Scholar 

  53. Ngan L D, Tsai Flora S, Keong C C, Kanagasabai R. Towards a common benchmark framework for cloud brokers. In: Proceedings of the 18th IEEE International Conference on Parallel and Distributed Systems. 2012, 750–754

    Google Scholar 

  54. Neapolitan R, Naimipour K. Foundations of algorithms. Swdbury, Mass: Jones & Bartlett Publishers, 2010

    MATH  Google Scholar 

  55. Karim R, Ding C, Miri A. An end-to-end QoS mapping approach for cloud service selection. In: Proceedings of the 9th IEEE World Congress on Services. 2013, 341–348

    Google Scholar 

  56. Komninos N, Junejo A K. (2015, December). Privacy preserving attribute based encryption for multiple cloud collaborative environment. In: Proceedings of the 8th IEEE/ACM International Conference on Utility and Cloud Computing. 2015, 595–600

    Google Scholar 

  57. Juan-Verdejo A, Zschaler S, Surajbali B, Baars H, Kemper H G. In-CLOUDer: a formalized decision support modelling approach to migrate applications to cloud environments. In: Proceedings of the 40th EUROMICRO Conference on Software Engineering and Advanced Applications. 2014, 467–474

    Google Scholar 

  58. Grozev N, Buyya R. Multi-cloud provisioning and load distribution for three-tier applications. ACM Transactions on Autonomous and Adaptive Systems, 2014, 9(3): 13

    Article  Google Scholar 

  59. Simarro J L L, Moreno-Vozmediano R, Montero R S, Llorente I M. Scheduling strategies for optimal service deployment across multiple clouds. Future Generation Computer Systems, 2013, 29(6): 1431–1441

    Article  Google Scholar 

  60. Amato A, Di Martino B, Venticinque S. Evaluation and brokering of service level agreements for negotiation of cloud infrastructures. In: Proceedings of International Conference Internet Technology and Secured Transactions. 2012, 144–149

    Google Scholar 

  61. Afify Y M, Moawad I F, Badr N L, Tolba M. Cloud services discovery and selection: survey and new semantic-based system. In: Hassanien A E, Kim T H, Kacprzyk J, et al. eds. Bio-inspiring Cyber Security and Cloud Services: Trends and Innovations, Springer International Publishing, 2014. 449–477

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  62. Afify Y M, Moawad I F, Badr N L, Tolba M. A semantic-based software-as-a-service (SaaS) discovery and selection system. In: Proceedings of the 8th International Conference on Computer Engineering & Systems. 2013, 57–63

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Meysam Vakili.

Additional information

Meysam Vakili received his BS degree in software engineering from University of Fasa, Fars, Iran in 2011, and MS degree in software engineering from University of Science and Culture, Tehran, Iran in 2014. His research interests include distributed systems, Internet of Things, cloud computing, and complex event processing.

Neda Jahangiri received her BS degree in software engineering in 2012, and MS degree in software engineering from University of Science and Culture, Tehran, Iran in 2015. Her research interests include cloud computing and databases.

Mohsen Sharifi is a professor of System Software Engineering at the School of Computer Engineering at Iran University of Science and Technology, Iran. He directs a distributed systems research group and laboratory. His main interest is in the development of distributed systems, solutions, and applications, particularly for use in various fields of science. The development of a true distributed operating system is on top of his wish list. He received his BS, MS, and PhD degrees in computer science from the University of Manchester, UK.

Electronic supplementary material

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Vakili, M., Jahangiri, N. & Sharifi, M. Cloud service selection using cloud service brokers: approaches and challenges. Front. Comput. Sci. 13, 599–617 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11704-017-6124-7

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11704-017-6124-7

Keywords

Navigation