A Generic Platform for Conducting SLA Negotiations

In service-oriented systems, negotiating service level agreements (SLAs) occupies a central role in the service usage cycle. It is during negotiations that parties are brought together in an interactive mechanism determined by the negotiation protocols. The choice and description of negotiation protocol determines the scope of information flow which in turn influences convergence upon an agreement. In this chapter, we observe the state of the art on negotiations and introduce the generic negotiation platform developed for the SLA@SOI framework. We strive for a generic approach for protocol description and execution that also caters for domain-based rationality and ease of adoption.