Computer Science and Electrical Engineering:

Title:            A review of service selection in cloud computing environment
Authors:       Bilkisu Larai Muhammad-Bello
Abstract:     Cloud computing has enabled the on-demand utilization of elastic and scalable Information Technology (IT) infrastructure from remote centers worldwide. With its emergence, organizations no longer need to make huge upfront investment for the procurement of IT infrastructure. The adoption of cloud services is rising rapidly and this has engendered many Cloud Service Providers (CSPs) into the market. This trend has made it more difficult for prospective cloud users to select an optimum service from a pool of functionally equivalent CSPs. Consequently, this predicament has actuated research in cloud service selection where different techniques have been employed in ranking of CSPs based on different number of criteria. A systematic mapping study is presented in this paper in order to present a wide review of primary studies in the area of service selection in cloud computing. The initial search identified 356 studies, of which 33 were identified as relevant to answer the research questions after undergoing the review quality assessment and applying the inclusion/exclusion criteria. The study was based on 4 main research questions in order to establish the research evidences existing on the topic and also provide an indication of the quantity of evidence. The findings show that most of the primary studies have focused on Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS). Also, different frameworks have been developed using different sets of evaluation criteria based on different mathematical techniques with Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) being the most common. The results also show that there is currently no unified or defined metrics/evaluation criteria for comparing cloud service providers. In conclusion, the research findings show that current research in the area of service selection in cloud computing have concentrated on mainly the quantitative criteria in their evaluation and selection process while the qualitative criteria of Quality of Service (QoS) are yet to be adequately considered. This paper also contributes to summarizing the body of knowledge in the area of service selection in cloud computing and directs effort for future research in the area.

Keywords:   Cloud Services, Service Selection in Cloud computing, Cloud Computing, Mapping study, Cloud Service Selection
Pages:          343-350

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