A pattern based feasibility study of cloud computing for Smart Mobility solutions

Abstract

It is observed that the number of service platform solutions in the context of Smart City and respective Smart Mobility is increasing. Such platforms enable the exchange of mobility data between interested parties. Some service platform solutions are developed as cloud applications or make use of the benefits which the cloud computing paradigm offers. However, appropriate or detailed analyses of such platforms against cloud computing characteristics have not been found in the literature. Such analyses are of importance for the design and development process of future service solutions as they point out critical aspects that have to be appropriately addressed, assessed and incorporated into a solution's architecture to actually benefit from cloud computing. We close this gap by contributing an analysis of our developed mobility service ecosystem, consisting of service marketplaces and an ecosystem manager in terms of cloud computing characteristics. We analyze the operational behavior of the mobility service ecosystem and its components and assign respective cloud computing patterns to make concepts and requirements explicit. This analysis supports architects of future mobility solutions to understand the operational obstacles of such an ecosystem, outlines critical requirements of each component and provides a common terminology that utilized information transparency and knowledge sharing. Thus, service provisioning solutions can improve their performance and quality when they consider cloud computing pattern in their design.