Preference-based cloud service recommendation as a brokerage service

Abstract

As the multitude and complexity of cloud services increases, the role of cloud brokers in the cloud service ecosystems becomes increasingly important. In particular, the lack of standard mechanisms that allow for the comparison of cloud service specifications against user requirements taking into account the implicit uncertainty and vagueness is a major hindrance during the cloud service evaluation and selection. In this paper, we discuss the Preference-based cLoud Service Recommender (PuLSaR) that uses a holistic multi-criteria decision making (MCDM) approach for offering optimisation as brokerage service. The specification and implementation details of this dedicated software are thoroughly discussed while the background method used is summarised. Both method and brokerage service allow for the multi-objective assessment of cloud services in a unified way, taking into account precise and imprecise metrics and dealing with their fuzziness.