Integrating cost analysis in the cloud: A SoS approach

Cloud computing has succeeded in transforming the ICT industry, making software and hardware services even more accessible to businesses and establishing an environment for rapid innovation. Since cloud computing is an innovative business model, whose deployment is accompanied by huge investments, a thorough, multilevel cost analysis of provided services is vital. Such an analysis should focus, among others, on demand forecasting for computational resources and financial assessment of cloud computing investments, estimating crucial economic parameters, such as Net Present Value (NPV), Return of Investment (ROI) and Total Cost of Ownership (TCO). Into this context, a model-driven techno-economic approach is introduced in this paper targeting the estimation of economic parameters of cloud service deployment, which is able to assist decision support procedures for cloud users, cloud providers and cloud brokers. SysML is adopted as a modeling language for describing cloud architectures as system-of-systems (SoS), emphasizing cost properties. As an example, the Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) for cloud infrastructure and services is explored. TCO properties are incorporated into SysML cloud models, while cloud providers are facilitated in computing TCO.