Title: An intelligent mechanism for requirements change management of cloud computing requests

Authors: Nassima Bouchareb

Addresses: LIRE Laboratory, Department of Software Technologies and Information Systems, Faculty of New Technologies of Information and Communication, University of Abdelhamid Mehri, Constantine, Algeria

Abstract: Cloud environments are typically highly dynamic, making it challenging to identify, clarify and manage their requirements, especially when services and requirements change unpredictably. In this work, we introduce an agent-based mechanism designed to manage requirements changes, with a specific focus on requests for Virtual Machines (VM) allocation/reallocation in a Cloud Computing system. We begin by explaining the principle of the virtual machine allocation mechanism and the roles of the various agents involved. Next, we present the steps of the requirements change management process. Additionally, we delve into the various cases of requirements changes caused, whether initiated by the Cloud provider or customers, including adding a request, cancelling a request and modifying a request. Finally, we provide a case study and simulation results demonstrating that our proposed mechanism increases the number of accepted requests, enhances tasks processing and minimise energy consumption, ultimately boosting the profit of Cloud providers.

Keywords: cloud computing; virtual machine allocation/reallocation; requirements engineering; multi-agent systems; migration; energy efficiency.

DOI: 10.1504/IJGUC.2025.143877

International Journal of Grid and Utility Computing, 2025 Vol.16 No.1, pp.15 - 28

Received: 17 Feb 2023
Accepted: 27 Dec 2023
Published online: 12 Jan 2025 *