Hedging Cloud Energy Costs via Risk-free Provision Point Contracts

Owen Rogers, Dave Cliff

2013

Abstract

The cost of electricity is a major concern to public providers of cloud computing services. On-demand pricing, common amongst cloud providers, does not aid the provider in planning future demand and therefore purchasing energy at discounted rates. In this paper, we describe a number of advance pricing schemes for cloud computing resources based on provision-point contracts, commonly used by deal-of-the-day websites such as Groupon. We propose three models – Group Provision Points, Contributory Provision Points, and Variable Reward Forwards – that each reward consumers with reduced prices for advance reservations, while allowing providers to make accurate forecasts of energy usage. Furthermore, we show how the schemes are risk-free for the provider, guaranteeing to be at least as profitable as on-demand schemes. We present results from a simulation of the schemes, and compare the results to our analytically derived predictions.

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Paper Citation


in Harvard Style

Rogers O. and Cliff D. (2013). Hedging Cloud Energy Costs via Risk-free Provision Point Contracts . In Proceedings of the 3rd International Conference on Cloud Computing and Services Science - Volume 1: CLOSER, ISBN 978-989-8565-52-5, pages 244-252. DOI: 10.5220/0004374502440252


in Bibtex Style

@conference{closer13,
author={Owen Rogers and Dave Cliff},
title={Hedging Cloud Energy Costs via Risk-free Provision Point Contracts},
booktitle={Proceedings of the 3rd International Conference on Cloud Computing and Services Science - Volume 1: CLOSER,},
year={2013},
pages={244-252},
publisher={SciTePress},
organization={INSTICC},
doi={10.5220/0004374502440252},
isbn={978-989-8565-52-5},
}


in EndNote Style

TY - CONF
JO - Proceedings of the 3rd International Conference on Cloud Computing and Services Science - Volume 1: CLOSER,
TI - Hedging Cloud Energy Costs via Risk-free Provision Point Contracts
SN - 978-989-8565-52-5
AU - Rogers O.
AU - Cliff D.
PY - 2013
SP - 244
EP - 252
DO - 10.5220/0004374502440252