A comprehensive business domain ontology for cloud services

Despite the evident proliferation of Cloud Services (CS), many challenges hinder efficient service discovery and selection processes. A strong key enabler is use of ontology in CS domain. However, no broad cloud ontology has dominated yet. In this regard, we propose a fully-fledged comprehensive business domain ontology for CS with querying capabilities. The proposed CS ontology encompasses cloud taxonomy, delivery, deployment and price models. In addition to technical and computing aspects, it also covers business aspects of CS. Distinctively, it elaborates on non-functional aspects that are usually neglected in CS semantic modeling. It encompasses in-depth coverage of service characteristics, quality of service metrics and service level agreement terms. We present ontology development methodology, conceptual model and implementation details. Proposed CS ontology can be perceived as a knowledge base for CS discovery and selection. It was published as contribution to the research community.