A framework for Web Services Procurement

This paper describes a framework for providing differentiated levels of Web services to different customers on the basis of service level agreements (SLAs). Under the framework described in this paper, service providers can offer Web services at different service levels. In general, the service levels are differentiated based on many variables such as responsiveness, availability, and performance. The framework comprises the Web service level agreement (WSLA) language to specify SLAs in a flexible and individualized way, a system to monitor the compliance of a provided service with a service level agreement, and a workload management system that prioritizes requests according to the associated SLAs