A Multi-Cloud Marketplace Model with Multiple Brokers for IaaS Layer and Generalized Stable Matching

In this paper, we propose a multi-cloud marketplace model for Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) layer with multiple cloud providers, intermediate brokers and end users. The brokers service end users subscribed to them by aggregating resources (virtual machines) from cloud providers while maximizing their profits. Similarly cloud providers (producers) allocate their supply of virtual machines to brokers (consumers) so as to maximize their profits. We define the notion of social welfare in this market structure and study two trading schemes. The first scheme involves centralized control which aims at maximizing social welfare but may contain unstable producer-consumer pairs who have an incentive to deviate from the current allocation. The second scheme eliminates such unstable pairs by using a generalization of stable matching algorithm but may lead to sub-optimal social welfare. The stable matching algorithm we proposed in this paper is a particular way of generalizing the original Gale-Shapley algorithm.