Cloud Services Evaluation through QoE: A Methodological Approach

Abstract

Cloud computing has been touted as a revolutionary concept in computing in the Information Age, since it enhances the quality of communication and it is highly cost effective. Cloud computing market has attracted the interest of several providers and corporations, creating an environment in which the user's Quality of Experience (QoE) becomes a competitive advantage. Cloud services are often available as Web applications, since Web browsers may provide a more user friendly interface. Thus, Web Application Response plays a critical role in the perceptions of cloud service users. This article proposes a methodology to evaluate the user Quality of Experience of cloud services, with focus on web applications, using the MOS score in a user-centered approach. This methodology estimates the QoE from the end-to-end response time and adjusts the estimated score according to the evaluation context, thought maximum session time. Estimation of QoE is a differentiating factor in choosing cloud service providers and defining the form of implementing cloud applications (e.g., Through programming language, page type or application server). The proposed methodology has been applied to three cloud service servers, located in Brazil, Europe and USA and several case studies in business contexts have been evaluated, comparing different clients and server applications in a monitored environment. The results point to the crucial role that the evaluation period plays in the comparison of solutions.