Towards Internet intelligent services based on Cloud computing and multi-agents

Cloud computing systems provide large-scale infrastructures and services for Internet computing applications. They are "elastic" therefore are able to adapt to user and application needs. Clouds are used through a service-oriented interface that implements the *-as-a-service paradigm to offer Cloud services on demand. This chapter discusses Cloud computing models and architectures, their use in distributed applications, and examines analogies, differences and potential synergies between Cloud computing and multi-agent systems. Since the combination of Clouds and agents can benefit from semantics, we also discuss use of ontologies in this context. Our analysis is lead having in mind the goal of implementing Internet-based complex systems and intelligent applications by using of Cloud systems, software agents, and ontologies. In particular, the convergence of interests between multi-agent systems that need reliable distributed infrastructures and Cloud computing systems that need intelligent software with dynamic, flexible, and autonomous behavior can result in new systems and applications. © Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2014.