Delivering Cloud Services with QoS Requirements: An Opportunity for ICT SMEs

The acknowledged success and diffusion of Cloud computing is due to its great potential in terms of improving companies' business model. Notwithstanding this opportunity, two main issues arise: the need of brokers supporting users in the selection of the most suitable offers, and the provisioning of dedicated services with higher levels of quality different from mere availability. This paper discusses the expected performance in a real-case scenario of a Cloud brokering tool delivering two services: e-Learning courses in virtual classroom and Risk Assessment evaluation, each with a specific set of non-functional requirements. The broker relies on the resources supplied by a hybrid Cloud infrastructure, allocated following different scheduling strategies, which dynamically select the proposals better satisfying the QoS requested by users. The objective is the execution of the highest amount of user requests along with the maximization of the profit of the private Cloud provider, in a context of posted price economic model.