Simulating negotiation-based cloud markets

Abstract

Today, the so called supermarket approach is used for trading Cloud services on Cloud markets. Thereby, consumers purchase Cloud services at fixed prices without negotiation. More dynamic Cloud markets are emerging as e.g. the recent development of the Amazon EC2 spot market shows - with spot blocks and spot fleet management. Hence, autonomous Bazaar-based negotiations are a promising approach for trading Cloud services on future Cloud markets. Thereby, market participants negotiate the characteristics of Cloud services which are described in Service Level Agreements (SLAs). Specifications such as the WS-Agreement Negotiation standard foster the development of such Bazaar-based Cloud markets. In this paper we present a scientific simulation environment for the simulation of Bazaar-based Cloud markets which conforms to the WS-Agreement Negotiation standard. A two-stepped process is required for using the simulation environment: first consumers, intermediaries and providers have to be created, then strategies have to be assigned to them before the result of the simulation can be analyzed. The aim of the simulation environment is to support market participants during the evaluation of their negotiation strategies.