Service composition in the multi cloud environment

Abstract

Purpose User requests over the cloud are not achievable with one single service, multiple services need to be executed to fulfill what a user asks for. Typically, such services are composed and presented as one global service. Moreover, the same operation can be achieved by multiple services available at different clouds, which can result in different possibilities in composing them. This paper aims to decrease the number of clouds involved in the composition process, so that user requests are satisfied with minimal cost (communication costs, execution time and financial charges). Design/methodology/approach This paper investigates the use of an intelligent water drops (IWDs) optimization-based algorithm, and an integer linear programming model to optimize the number of cloud bases involved in the composition process. A comparison of the solutions found by these two techniques is presented in the paper. Findings The obtained results show that the number of cloud bases can be decreased without affecting user satisfaction. Originality/value The paper is a first attempt to use the IWDs algorithm for service composition, tested with big-size data.