Agent-based cloud resources negotiation

In Cloud computing, when dealing with the interaction between providers and consumers, one of the main challenges is to build effective mechanisms for SLA negotiation. Such protocols must deal with different policies and objectives of the competing parties. This paper introduces and discusses protocols for SLA negotiation with multiple providers based on the ascending English auction, without requiring the cloud service consumer to reveal her preferences. We show that these protocols have desirable outcomes for all participants, by testing them with own developed agents equipped with different opponent learning strategies on a domain specially created to simulate a cloud environment.