A Novel Model for Competition and Cooperation among Cloud Providers
A Novel Model for Competition and Cooperation among Cloud Providers
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DOI：
10.1109/tcc.2014.2322355
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发表时间：
2014-07
影响因子：
6.5
通讯作者：
Tram Truong-Huu;C. Tham
中科院分区：
文献类型：
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作者：
Tram Truong-Huu;C. Tham
在受到业界高度关注后，云市场如今与许多云提供商竞争激烈。一方面，云提供商在争夺现有和新的云用户方面相互竞争。为了留住现有用户和吸引新用户，每个供应商都必须提供一个最优的价格策略，使最终收益最大化，提高竞争优势。供应商之间的竞争导致市场和动态资源价格随着时间的推移而演变。另一方面，云提供商可能会相互合作，以提高他们的最终收入。根据服务水平协议，提供商可以将其用户的资源请求外包给其合作伙伴，以降低运营成本，从而提高最终收入。这就产生了在合作环境中确定合作各方的问题。本文针对当前云市场的这两个问题展开研究。首先，我们解决了供应商之间的竞争问题，并提出了动态价格政策。我们使用离散选择模型来描述用户基于其获得的受益值的选择行为。选择模型用于推导用户选择由某一提供商提供服务的概率。供应商之间的竞争被描述为一个非合作随机博弈，参与者是同时提出价格策略的供应商。该博弈被建模为一个马尔可夫决策过程，其解是一个马尔可夫完美均衡。然后，我们通过提出一种新的算法来确定合作策略来解决提供商之间的合作问题，该算法告诉提供商是在本地满足用户的资源请求，还是将其外包给特定的提供商。该算法得到了最优合作结构，不存在供应商单方面偏离以获得更多收益的情况。通过数值仿真对所提模型的性能进行了评估。
Having received significant attention in the industry, the cloud market is nowadays fiercely competitive with many cloud providers. On one hand, cloud providers compete against each other for both existing and new cloud users. To keep existing users and attract newcomers, it is crucial for each provider to offer an optimal price policy which maximizes the final revenue and improves the competitive advantage. The competition among providers leads to the evolution of the market and dynamic resource prices over time. On the other hand, cloud providers may cooperate with each other to improve their final revenue. Based on a service level agreement, a provider can outsource its users' resource requests to its partner to reduce the operation cost and thereby improve the final revenue. This leads to the problem of determining the cooperating parties in a cooperative environment. This paper tackles these two issues of the current cloud market. First, we solve the problem of competition among providers and propose a dynamic price policy. We employ a discrete choice model to describe the user's choice behavior based on his obtained benefit value. The choice model is used to derive the probability of a user choosing to be served by a certain provider. The competition among providers is formulated as a noncooperative stochastic game where the players are providers who act by proposing the price policy simultaneously. The game is modelled as a Markov Decision Process whose solution is a Markov Perfect Equilibrium. Then, we address the cooperation among providers by presenting a novel algorithm for determining a cooperation strategy that tells providers whether to satisfy users' resource requests locally or outsource them to a certain provider. The algorithm yields the optimal cooperation structure from which no provider unilaterally deviates to gain more revenue. Numerical simulations are carried out to evaluate the performance of the proposed models.