An Evaluation Model for Selecting Cloud Services from Commercially Available Cloud Providers

Abstract

Selecting the appropriate cloud services and cloudproviders according to the cloud users requirements is becoming a complex task, as the number of cloud providers increases. Cloud providers offer similar kinds of cloud services, but they are different in terms of price, quality of service, customer experience, and service delivery. The most challenging issue of the current cloud computing business is that cloud providers commit a certain Service Level Agreement (SLA), with cloud users, but there is little or no verification mechanisms which ensure that cloud providers are providing cloud services according to their commitment. In the current literature, there is a lack of an evaluation model which provides the real status of cloud providers for the cloud users. In this paper, an evaluation model is proposed, which verifies the quality of cloud services delivered for each service and provides the service status of the cloud providers. Finally, evaluation results obtained from cloud auditors are visualized in an ordered performance heat map, showing the cloud providers in a decreasing ordering of overall service quality. In this way, the proposed service quality evaluation model represents a visual recommender system for cloud service brokers and cloud users.