Cloud-based Service Provision Research Articles

Efficient Multi-linear Key Pairing Cryptosystem for Reliable Cloud-based Service Provisioning

Cloud computing has gained rapid growth in the development of different fields of science and engineering. However, due to the distributed nature of cloud computing, session key generation and establishment is the pressing issue. Session key management plays the utmost important role in the secure exchange of sensitive login credentials and transaction information. Moreover, conventional session key management mechanisms are inadequate and cannot be directly adopted in cloud-based environments. Hence, session key management is very much solely needed solution for reliable cloud-based service provisioning. In mutual authentication, bi-linear key pairing cryptosystem plays a critical role to generate and establish a session key. The existing mutual authentication schemes fail to support true mutual authentication in cloud-based environments as they are vulnerable to secret key leakage, perfect forward secrecy, and untraceability. To mitigate the effect of these attacks, this research develops an efficient multi-linear key pairing cryptosystem. In this cryptosystem, challenge-response messages are used for generating and establishing a one-time shared session key. Furthermore, the performance analysis of the proposed cryptosystem depicts a significant reduction of computation cost, authentication accuracy rates, and resistance to the aforementioned attacks.

Contemporary digital business model decision making: a cloud computing supply-side perspective

Cloud computing is an example of a promising technological paradigm which possesses the potential to act as a catalyst to drive radical innovations in the development of the networked society. While some information and communication technology (ICT) providers have reaped the rewards by transitioning from antiquated hardware and service provision to more propitious cloud-based service provision methods, others have experienced substantial difficulties related to the formulation and operationalisation of effective business models. This paper presents a research framework which can serve as a lens for exploring how digital organisations can execute their core business model decisions along increasingly specific decision making levels. Taking the perspective of an exemplar established large ICT provider, our study uses the research framework in order to provide new insight for facilitating cloud computing supply-side business model effectiveness.

The Impact of Cloud-Based Digital Transformation on IT Service Providers

Cloud-based digital transformation is having a profound impact on new and incumbent information technology service providers. In transitioning from traditional to cloud-based service provision, some IT service providers are experiencing substantial difficulties in realizing effective business models. Taking the perspective of 20 large business model mature and small and medium enterprise born-on-the-cloud multinational IT service providers, this focus group study contributes to the dearth of research examining the broader impact of cloud computing on IT service providers' business model. The study provides two core insights. First, using the STOF business model framework, the paper provides a vivid contextual understanding of the nuanced impact of cloud computing along four core business model domains: service, technological, organisational and financial. Second, the study identifies a number of salient challenges which are impacting IT service providers' efforts to effectively leverage the benefits of cloud-based digital transformation.

A Semantic Framework to Support the Management of Cloud-Based Service Provision Within a Global Public Inclusive Infrastructure

ABSTRACTCloud computing has opened a new era in e-commerce. As the growth and complexity of public and private clouds increases, novel solutions are needed, enabling vendors to effectively manage the cloud-based distribution of their services. To this end, this paper presents a novel semantic framework with the main aim to support providers in the overall cloud-based service provision process, in terms of service ownership, licensing, and usage monitoring. The base of our framework is an ontological schema that models service business rules definition and license agreements registration, as well as service usage monitoring, with a special focus on web service and software applications cloud-based distribution. Our proposed ontology supports complex distribution schemas, related to multiple vendor-based service distribution, as well as personalized discount schemas, facilitating the deployment of marketing strategies during cloud-based service provision. On top of this ontological schema, we have further developed service and provider reputation and trust inference mechanisms, which operate on the basis of both service usage statistics and subjective end user feedback. Taking a step forward from the state of the art, our mechanisms also provide personalized discount suggestions, further facilitating providers in defining marketing strategies. Apart from supporting providers, our mechanisms also facilitate users in service and provider selection. In order to examine the application of our framework in practice, we have developed a user interface that provides basic features of our framework, within the context of a real cloud, oriented toward personalized cloud service provision; our framework has been integrated in the “Cloud4All” Global Public Inclusive Infrastructure (GPII).

Cross-layer resource orchestration for cloud service delivery: A seamless SDN approach

One of the main challenges of cloud-based service provisioning is to deploy a coordinated control of both application- and network-layer resources in order to provide adaptive service data delivery and adequate user service experiences. In this work we propose a signaling framework architecture for cross-layer resource orchestration, where service awareness provided by session control is effectively combined with the flexibility of software-defined network control. Following a hands-on approach, the proposed solution takes advantage of existing and commonly deployed technologies aiming at an incremental deployment of the software-defined control mechanisms for the purpose of cross-functional service orchestration. The signaling framework is presented and validated through experimental activities carried out on a test-bed reproducing a realistic cloud-based service scenario. Results are compared against an analytical model that allows to investigate and quantify the sensitivity of the cloud-based service performance to the most relevant system parameters. The study demonstrates that a critical role is played by the limitations of the response time of real devices such as commercial routers, and highlights how orchestration functions can mitigate the effect of such limitations while addressing scalability of the overall system.

A QoS-satisfied Prediction Model for Cloud-service Composition Based on Hidden Markov Model

There are various significant issues in cloud computing, such as service provision, service matching and service assessment, which have attracted researchersâ?? attentions recently. QoS play an increasingly important role during the procedure of cloud-based service provision for seamless and dynamic integration of cloud-service components. In this paper, we focus on the QoS-satisfied prediction for cloud-service composited components and present a QoS-satisfied prediction model based on hidden Markov model. For a general process of cloud-service provision, if the userâ??s QoS could not be satisfied only by one cloud-service component, the component composition should be considered to provide to user, where the QoS-satisfied capability of composited components need to be proactively predicted to guarantee the userâ??s QoS. We discuss the proposed model in detail and proof the model partly. The simulation results show that our model can obtain rather high prediction accuracy rate.

A Metric-Based Approach to Assess Risk for “On Cloud” Federated Identity Management

The cloud computing paradigm is set to become the next explosive revolution on the Internet, but its adoption is still hindered by security problems. One of the fundamental issues is the need for better access control and identity management systems. In this context, Federated Identity Management (FIM) is identified by researchers and experts as an important security enabler, since it will play a vital role in allowing the global scalability that is required for the successful implantation of cloud technologies. However, current FIM frameworks are limited by the complexity of the underlying trust models that need to be put in place before inter-domain cooperation. Thus, the establishment of dynamic federations between the different cloud actors is still a major research challenge that remains unsolved. Here we show that risk evaluation must be considered as a key enabler in evidence-based trust management to foster collaboration between cloud providers that belong to unknown administrative domains in a secure manner. In this paper, we analyze the Federated Identity Management process and propose a taxonomy that helps in the classification of the involved risks in order to mitigate vulnerabilities and threats when decisions about collaboration are made. Moreover, a set of new metrics is defined to allow a novel form of risk quantification in these environments. Other contributions of the paper include the definition of a generic hierarchical risk aggregation system, and a descriptive use-case where the risk computation framework is applied to enhance cloud-based service provisioning.