Cloud service selection: State-of-the-art and future research directions

Cloud technology connects a collection of virtualized computers that are dynamically provisioned as computing resources, based on negotiated agreements between service providers and users. It delivers information technology resources in diverse forms of service, and the explosion of Cloud services on the Internet brings new challenges in Cloud service discovery and selection. To address these challenges, a variety of studies have been carried out to develop advanced techniques to assist service users in choosing proper services. In this paper, we survey state-of-the-art Cloud service selection approaches, which are analysed from the following seven perspectives: context, purpose, data representation models, selection techniques, selection parameters, methods for quantifying qualitative parameters, and criteria weighting methods. After comparing and summarizing the reviewed approaches from these seven perspectives, we identify the primary research issues in contemporary Cloud service selection. This survey is expected to bring benefits to both researchers and business agents. Keywords-Cloud computing; Cloud Services; Cloud service selection; Decision making