The development of a cloudlet business model based on stakeholder’s service guarantees

In this study, a Service Level Agreement (SLA)-based Cloudlet business model was developed to facilitate the easy deployment of a Cloudlet instance by Small Medium Enterprises (SMEs) that ensures service guarantees by the edge. The development of the model is due to the lack of Cloudlet Business Models to assist and guarantee SMEs that the deployment of a Cloudlet can yield desired profits. The model consists of three role-players or stakeholders namely, the Cloudlet consumer, Cloudlet owners and Internet Service Providers (ISP) or Cloud Providers. The roles and interactions between the role-players are captured in an SLA. The SLA facilitates the provisioning and management of Cloudlet resources to ensure service guarantees and avoid deployment failures. The management and provision of Cloudlet resources can result in high throughput in the network, improving consumer Quality of Experience (QoE). The SLA defines the service description, service objectives, cost, and penalties and is imposed on consumers using a disclaimer page. The feasibility study of the developed model based on a coffee shop scenario was conducted using a Cost-Benefit Analysis (CBA) tool. The findings show that a coffee shop can gain about 164 cents per rand spent on Cloudlet operational costs over a period of 3 years. This can surely help SMEs gain financial stability and profit. Also, to demonstrate the effectiveness of an SLA on the Cloudlet Business Model, a coffee shop-based SLA simulation was conducted using CloudSim Plus tool. The results indicated that the provisioning of efficient resources in the network had a direct impact on the success of the SLA. The SLA’s success had an impact on both service guarantees and operational cost minimisation. Therefore it is concluded that an SLAbased Cloudlet business model proposed in this research ensures that stakeholders’ service guarantees are delivered.

Grantor dc:publisher.institution

University of Zululand

Year dc:date.issued

2020

Author dc:creator

• Nxumalo, Mandisa Nomfundo

• Service Level Agreement
• cloudlet business model

Licence

• https://devspace.unizulu.ac.za/bitstreams/040e8dea-9cee-494e-93c5-91188007bb02/download