Supporting cloud service selection with a risk-driven cost-benefit analysis

Abstract

Our earlier work indicates feasibility of eliciting multi-cloud requirements and thus identifying selectable cloud services based on a risk-driven approach. Once an overview of the selectable services that treat a specific risk is obtained, a decision needs to be taken regarding the final selection. This position paper focuses on providing a practical and simple approach to choosing a concrete cloud service (or a set of thereof) when several alternatives are available.We propose a risk-driven cost-benefit analysis approach and exemplify how a decision maker, such as a business analyst or a multi-cloud architecture designer, can apply it in the context of cloud service selection. The strength of the approach is in its simplicity, since the approach is based on a set of relatively comprehensible guidelines. Still, we consider this to be work in progress, since an analysis of how to combine a set of interdependent cloud services (which address several respective risks) is necessary for enabling a fullscale design of a multi-cloud based architecture.