Agent-based Cloud service composition

Service composition in multi-Cloud environments must coordinate self-interested participants, automate service selection, (re)configure distributed services, and deal with incomplete information about Cloud providers and their services. This work proposes an agent-based approach to compose services in multi-Cloud environments for different types of Cloud services: one-time virtualized services, e.g., processing a rendering job, persistent virtualized services, e.g., infrastructure-as-a-service scenarios, vertical services, e.g., integrating homogenous services, and horizontal services, e.g., integrating heterogeneous services. Agents are endowed with a semi-recursive contract net protocol and service capability tables (information catalogs about Cloud participants) to compose services based on consumer requirements. Empirical results obtained from an agent-based testbed show that agents in this work can: successfully compose services to satisfy service requirements, autonomously select services based on dynamic fees, effectively cope with constantly changing consumers’ service needs that trigger updates, and compose services in multiple Clouds even with incomplete information about Cloud participants.