A new flexible pricing mechanism considering price–quality relation for cloud resource allocation

Abstract

Determining the true value of a bid received from a trading opponent with respect to different conditions of the negotiation market is an important challenge in negotiation-based cloud resource allocation. This means that, in some market conditions, the received bid is more valuable than it seems (and vice versa). The image constructed from the price bid of a trading opponent determined with respect to the market conditions is called TVB (True Value of Bid). Moreover, the pricing mechanism that supports the calculation of TVB by a resource provider is called FPM (Flexible Pricing Mechanism). In well-known cloud markets, where resource type instances are supplied with various QoS levels, the mentioned challenge becomes more complicated. This is because picking negotiation strategy based on the calculated TVB should not lead to the rental of resource type instances with a lower QoS at a price higher than that of the same resource type instances with a higher level of QoS. Therefore, the aim of this research is designing a flexible pricing mechanism that supports price–quality relation in the cloud markets where resource type instances with various QoS levels are supplied. The simulation results indicate that the proposed negotiators outperform two other negotiators in names EMDA (Enhanced Market Driven Agent) and FNSSA (Fuzzy Negotiation Strategy Selection Agent).