Enterprises currently employ Cloud services in order to improve the scalability of their services and to deal with bursts in resource demands. However, at present, service providers have inflexible pricing, generally limited to flat rates or tariffs based on usage thresholds, and consumers are restricted to offerings from a single provider at a time. Also, many providers have proprietary interfaces to their services thus restricting the ability of consumers to swap one provider for another.
For Cloud computing to mature, it is required that the services follow standard interfaces. This would enable services to be commoditised and thus, would pave the way for the creation of a market infrastructure for trading in services. An example of such a market system, modeled on real-world exchanges, is shown in Figure 1. The market directory allows participants to locate providers or consumers with the right offers. Auctioneers periodically clear bids and asks received from market participants. The banking system ensures that financial transactions pertaining to agreements between participants are carried out. Brokers perform the same function in such a market as they do in real-world markets: they mediate between consumers and providers by buying capacity from the provider and sub-leasing these to the consumers. A broker can accept requests from many users who have a choice of submitting their requirements to different brokers. Consumers, brokers and providers are bound to their requirements and related compensations through SLAs. An SLA specifies the details of the service to be provided in terms of metrics agreed upon by all parties, and penalties for meeting and violating the expectations, respectively... more details