CSR: EAGER: Collaborative Research: Brokerage Services for the Next Generation Cloud

未来的云服务预计将越来越多地涉及和综合来自多个云的功能。在云计算环境下，不同组织的应用可以动态地建立协作关系，共享信息。在这种日益复杂的情况下，消费者和服务提供商都将面临新的挑战。例如，消费者将需要能够从一个潜在的巨大的池中识别出最好的服务提供者，这可能需要计算。服务提供商将需要能够确保松散连接的分包商之间共享的数据的安全性和隐私性。该项目提出了一种新颖的基于代理的架构，以促进具有成本效益的云供应。具体而言，这些专业人员将设计有效的索引结构，以方便管理由大量具有各种属性的服务提供者产生的大量信息。PI正在开发必要的服务，以实现有效的云代理，例如消费者的服务选择，消费者与其服务提供商之间的服务协商，以及复合服务中涉及的服务提供商之间的服务协议委托。沿着服务的发展，这项工作将产生新的策略分析、组合和委托技术，以适应云计算的独特特征。本项目的研究将有助于大大简化云计算服务的选择和管理，并将通过提供云经纪服务开辟新的商业机会。此外，建议的方法也可能有助于减少供应商锁定问题，这是消费者长期以来的主要担忧。

Future cloud services are expected to increasingly involve and synthesize capabilities from multiple clouds. Applications from different organizations may establish collaborative relationships and share information dynamically in cloud computing. In this increasingly complex scenario, both consumers and service providers will face new challenges. For example, consumers will need to be able to identify the best service providers from a potentially huge pool, which could be computationally demanding. Service providers will need to be able to ensure the security and privacy of data shared among loosely connected subcontractors.This project proposes a novel brokerage-based architecture to promote cost-effective cloud provisioning. Specifically, the PIs will devise efficient indexing structures to facilitate the management of massive information generated by a large number of service providers with a variety of properties. The PIs are developing necessary services to allow effective cloud-brokerage, such as service selection for consumers, service negotiation between consumers and their service providers, and service agreement delegation among service providers involved in a compound service. Along with the service development, the work will produce new policy analysis, composition and delegation techniques that accommodate the unique characteristics of the cloud.The research in this project will help significantly streamline the selection and management of cloud computing services, and will open up new business opportunities by providing cloud brokerage services. Moreover, the proposed approach may also help reduce the vendor lock-in problem which is a long standing major concern among consumers.