QoE4CLOUD: A QoE-driven multidimensional framework for cloud environments

Cloud Operators, in order to respond effectively to the QoS requirements of cloud applications, are obliged to apply over-provisioning policies. In general, this tactic leads to severe waste of the available cloud computing resources. Similarly, both Service/Platform Providers and End-Users wish to avoid the extra cost of this over-provisioning tactic and pay only per use, without having to statically reserve extra resources in advance. As a consequence, the cloud community urgently asks for flexible and intelligent management solutions, towards enhanced and efficient utilization of the cloud. The ultimate target of any intelligent cloud management scheme should be the provision of a service at an adequate quality level, creating the need to introduce the notion of Quality of Experience (QoE). In this context, this paper proposes a unified QoE-aware management framework, directly targeting to cloud computing environments. The proposed management system suggests the optimization of cloud resources usage and offered services in terms of QoE, satisfying the different service and resource requirements of all the involved cloud entities. In addition, the proposed novel approach merges together various QoS aspects in a multidimensional framework, referred to as QoE4CLOUD, which considers the perceived quality as the key metric for the management and performance optimization of the cloud environment.