Miracle: An Agile Colocation Platform for Enabling XaaS Cloud Architecture

Abstract

Cloud Service Providers (CSPs) offer services to large scale business organizations using different cloud frameworks including Platform as a Service (PaaS), Software as a Service (SaaS), Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) and follow various business models to realize profitability while addressing the challenges regarding scalability, guaranteed connectivity and security. In order to address such issues, Colocation service providers (third-party organizations) lease physical infrastructure services in geographically distributed locations known as colocation points (Co-Lo). Organization eventually request services available within a given colocation facility. Such a solution is challenging in a way that not all service offerings are available on a given Co-Lo provider. The proposed platform 'Miracle' addresses aforementioned challenges by providing agility and cost reduction to organizations aiming to leverage colocation services. Our solution leverages Software Defined Networking along with service and performance awareness technology to virtualize the organization's presence in a Co-Lo. Hence, organization can be associated or re-associated on the fly to required Co-Lo according to its service connectivity needs at a given time. Our solution may benefit cloud services industry and their customers while adopting the open-source computing technologies such as virtualization, dynamic provisioning environment, and multi-tenancy resulting in offering increased efficiency in a profitable and cost effective manner.