Formulating and managing viable SLAs in cloud computing from a small to medium service provider's viewpoint: A state-of-the-art review

• Published in: Information systems (Oxford) 2017-11, Vol.71, p.240-259
• Main Authors: Hussain, Walayat, Hussain, Farookh Khadeer, Hussain, Omar K., Damiani, Ernesto, Chang, Elizabeth
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Cloud computing; Consumers; Customer services; Forming; Information systems; Internet service providers; Management; Random numbers; Service level agreements; Service Level Objectives; SLA management; SLA monitoring; Small & medium sized enterprises-SME; State-of-the-art reviews; Trusted relationship; Ubiquitous computing; Viable SLA life cycle
• ISSN: 0306-4379; 1873-6076
• DOI: 10.1016/j.is.2017.08.007

•Presents a state of the art review on SLA management from service provider side in Cloud Computing.•Presents a critical evaluation of the existing work and identifies the research gaps to be addressed for provider-side Cloud service management. A thorough literature review in the existing area is presented.•Presents an overview of our proposed framework OPV-SLA framework to address the identified issues and validates the results on a cloud dataset. In today's competitive world, service providers need to be customer-focused and proactive in their marketing strategies to create consumer awareness of their services. Cloud computing provides an open and ubiquitous computing feature in which a large random number of consumers can interact with providers and request services. In such an environment, there is a need for intelligent and efficient methods that increase confidence in the successful achievement of business requirements. One such method is the Service Level Agreement (SLA), which is comprised of service objectives, business terms, service relations, obligations and the possible action to be taken in the case of SLA violation. Most of the emphasis in the literature has, until now, been on the formation of meaningful SLAs by service consumers, through which their requirements will be met. However, in an increasingly competitive market based on the cloud environment, service providers too need a framework that will form a viable SLA, predict possible SLA violations before they occur, and generate early warning alarms that flag a potential lack of resources. This is because when a provider and a consumer commit to an SLA, the service provider is bound to reserve the agreed amount of resources for the entire period of that agreement – whether the consumer uses them or not. It is therefore very important for cloud providers to accurately predict the likely resource usage for a particular consumer and to formulate an appropriate SLA before finalizing an agreement. This problem is more important for a small to medium cloud service provider which has limited resources that must be utilized in the best possible way to generate maximum revenue. A viable SLA in cloud computing is one that intelligently helps the service provider to determine the amount of resources to offer to a requesting consumer, and there are number of studies on SLA management in the literature. The aim of this paper is two-fold. First, it presents a comprehensive overview of existing state