Agent-based Cloud Computing
Agent-based Cloud computing generally includes a body of works involving the construction of agents for bolstering discovery, negotiation, composition, scheduling, workflow, and monitoring of Cloud resources.
Professor Benjamin Kwang Mong Sim is a pioneer and a leading researcher in Agent-based Cloud computing. Aside from being the first to coin the terms "agent-based Cloud computing", "Cloud intelligence", and "intelligent InterCloud" and providing the benchmark of cloud agents and the blueprint of an intelligent intercloud, he founded the world's first-ever Multiagent and Cloud Computing Systems Laboratory in 2008 and served as its Director. According to Google search, Professor Sim's paper entitled "agent-based Cloud commerce" published in 2009 is the earliest published paper documenting the idea of using intelligent agents for bolstering Cloud resource trading (discovery and negotiation) and his paper entitled "agent-based Cloud computing" is the most frequently cited paper on this topic. Professor Sim has contributed many award-winning innovations on agent-based Cloud computing, including foundational ideas, mathematical theory, models, protocols, testbeds, algorithms, and benchmark, as well as proof-of-concept software prototypes for supporting agent-based Cloud computing. He has also contributed two single-authored IEEE Transactions Survey-Tutorial papers on agent-based cloud computing, cloud intelligence, and intelligent intercloud and delivered several keynote lectures on agent-based cloud computing in IEEE-spored international conferences.
Awards and Accolades
1. Spotlight Paper in IEEE Transactions on Services Computing, article title: "Agent-based Cloud Computing".
2. No. 5 Most Popular Article in IEEE Xplore out of over 3.76 million articles. (please see article entitled "Agent-based Cloud Computing")
3. No. 1 Most Popular Paper in IEEE Transactions on Services Computing for 33 consecutive months, article title: "Agent-based Cloud Computing".
4. No. 1 Most Popular Paper in IEEE Transactions on Cloud Computing (please see paper entitled "Agent-based Interactions and Economics Encounters in an Intelligent InterCloud.")
5. No. 1 Most Popular Paper in IEEE Transactions on Cybernetics (please see paper entitled "Complex and Concurrent Negotiation for Multiple Interrelated e-Markets.")
6. No. 19 Hottest Article in Future Generation Computer Systems Journal (please see paper entitled "A Family of Heuristicsfor Agent-based Elastic Cloud Bag-of-Tasks Concurrent Scheduling")
7. Outstanding Paper Nomination (only about 2% were selected): K. M. Sim. Agent-based Cloud Commerce. IEEE International Conference on Industrial Engineering and Engineering Management 2009.
8. Best Paper Award. 2013 IAENG International Conference on Internet Computing and Web Services. Paper title: "Towards a Unifying Multilateral Cloud Negotiation Strategy"
9. Best Student Paper Award. 2014 IAENG International Conference on Internet Computing and Web Services. Paper title: "CB-Cloudle: A Centroid-based Cloud Service Search Engine"
10. Best Student Paper Award. 2010 IAENG International Conference on Internet Computing and Web Services. Paper title: "An Ontology-enhanced Cloud Service Discovery System"
Technical Contributions
Foundational ideas: In 2009, Professor Sim introduced an agent-based paradigm for constructing tools and testbeds for Cloud commerce. His paper on agent-based Cloud commerce received an Outstanding Paper Nomination in an IEEE conference. Subsequently, his article on "Agent-based Cloud Computing" was selected as the Spotlight Paper of the October-December 2012 issue of the IEEE Transactions on Services Computing - one of the leading IEEE journals focusing on Cloud computing. In 2012, the IEEE Transactions on Services Computing was listed as one of the top IEEE Journals and ranked 5th out of 105 journals in computer science-software engineering. As of August 1, 2017, it has over 400 citations (according to Google scholar) and around 30,000 downloads in IEEE Xplore and it was the No. 5 Most Popular Article in IEEE Xplore in August 2014 among over 3.76 millions articles. In addition, Professor Sim's Spotlight Paper had been the No. 1 Most Popular Article in TSC for 33 consecutive months.
Vision: Professor Sim's vision of developing an intelligent InterCloud populated by a society of intelligent agents is summarized in his article entitled "Cloud Intelligence: Agents within an InterCloud", published in the Awareness Magazine: The official magazine for Future and Emerging Technologies Proactive Initiative, funded by the European Commission under FP7.
Mathematical theory: Professor Sim's work on agent-based InterCloud game theory provides a mathematical theory for analyzing the interactions of stakeholders in an intelligent InterCloud. His paper entitled "Agent-based Interactions and Economic Encounters in an Intelligent InterCloud" was the No. 1 Most Popular Paper in IEEE Transactions on Cloud Computing in February 2017.
Models, protocols, testbeds, and algorithms: Professor Sim has contributed a large number of agent-based models, protocols, testbeds, and algorithms for bolstering the discovery, negotiation, composition, scheduling, workflow, and monitoring of Cloud resources.
Agent-based Cloud resource negotiation: Professor Sim is the first to introduce the idea of using bargaining as a new model for allowing dynamic pricing of Cloud resources and also the first to develop an agent-based testbed for Cloud service-level agreement (SLA) negotiation (published in 2009 and received an Outstanding Paper Nomination in the IEEE International Conference on Industrial Engineering and Engineering Management 2009). He also developed a concurrent negotiation model for simulating trading in a Cloud resource market. (which was first introduced in 2010). His concurrent Cloud negotiation model was published in the IEEE Transactions on Cybernetics (TCyb) and became the No. 1 Most Popular Paper in TCyb in December 2017. Furthermore, in 2013, his work on devising a unifying Cloud negotiation strategy received the Best Paper Award in the 2013 IAENG International Conference on Internet Computing and Web Services. Moreover, his laboratory has also devised an agent-based multi-issue Cloud negotiation mechanism that enables consumers and providers to reach service-level agreements on issues such as price, time slot, and quality of service.
Agent-based Cloud resource scheduling: Professor Sim is the first to introduce agent-based problem solving techniques for Cloud resource scheduling. His joint article with his ex-postdoctoral fellow on "A Family of Heuristics for Agent-based Elastic Cloud Bag-of-Tasks Concurrent Scheduling" ranked 19 among the top 25 hottest articles in the Future Generation Computer Systems Journal - one of the most popular forums in Cloud computing. Additionally, Professor Sim's laboratory devised 1) an algorithm for determining sets of Cloud resources that can be used to execute bag of tasks (BoT) applications constrained by both budgets and deadlines, and 2) an agent-based testbed that supports the dynamic Cloud resource allocation and distributed execution of BoT applications.
Agent-based Cloud service composition: Professor Sim devised a multiagent interaction protocol for bolstering the integration of multiple resources from different Clouds into a unified service.
Agent-based Cloud Workflow: Using nested and colored Petri nets to coordinate concurrent workflow, Professor Sim's laboratory devised an agent-based approach for supporting workflow execution involving resources from multiple Clouds.
Agent-based Cloud service discovery: Professor Sim's laboratory developed an agent-based Cloud service discovery protocol that adopts similarity reasoning for matching requests from consumers to service advertisement from providers.
Agent-based Cloud resource monitoring: Professor Sim's laboratory developed an agent-based Cloud resource allocation model that adaptively allocates resources based on geographical distance and workloads of data centers, using Cloud monitoring agents to constantly check the resource utilization of data centers.
Proof-of-concept software prototypes: In 2010, his research laboratory developed the first-ever proof-of-concept prototype of a Cloud service search engine and his team won two Best Student Papers Awards, one in 2010 and one in 2014. His laboratory also built negotiation agents for pricing Cloud resources and carried out case studies comparing his negotiation Cloud negotiation pricing model with Amazon EC2's pricing models. This work was published in the IEEE Transactions on Systems, Man and Cybernetics, Part B - listed as one of the top IEEE Journals. More recently, his laboratory built an agent-based Cloud BoT execution tool called "CloudAgent" and carried out a case study using agents for resource allocation in Amazon EC2.
Two IEEE Transactions Survey-Tutorial Papers: Professor Sim is the sole author of two survey-tutorial papers in the IEEE Transactions on Cloud Computing and IEEE Transactions on Services Computing.
1. He has contributed an in-depth IEEE Transactions Survey paper on Agent-based Cloud Computing, which was the No. 1 Most Popular Paper in IEEE Transactions on Cloud Computing in April 2017. In his IEEE Transactions Survey Paper, Professor Sim provides 1) the definition for the terms "agent", "Cloud computing", "Intercloud", "agent-based Cloud computing", "Cloud intelligence", and "Intelligent Intercloud", 2) discussions of the significance and advantages of agent-based cloud computing, 3) a detailed review and comparison of state-of-the-art agent-based cloud computing models, and 4) a comparison of agent-based and non-agent-based approaches for parallel task executions in multiclouds. Click here to download the Survey Paper in the IEEE Transactions on Cloud Computing.
2. In his IEEE Transactions Survey-Tutorial paper on Cloud intelligence and Intelligent Intercloud, Professor Sim 1) constructs a cloud intelligence model for benchmarking cloud agents by prescribing six intelligent characteristics and six resource management capabilities of cloud agents, 2) provides a tutorial on the state-of-the-art agent-based cloud resource management techniques, 3) provides an architectural blueprint of an intelligent intercloud and its basic building blocks, and 4) introduces a proof-of-concept prototype of an intelligent intercloud and provides an application example of the prototype. Click here to download the Survey-Tutorial Paper in the IEEE Transactions on Services Computing.
MapReduce: Professor Sim's laboratory has also contributed a survey paper on job scheduling for MapReduce and a scheduling mechanism for workflow services containing multiple MapReduce jobs.
Impact and Influence
Agent-based Cloud computing has been receiving an increasing amount of attention from the international scientific community. For example, Professor Sim's paper entitled "agent-based Cloud computing" published in the IEEE Transactions on Services Computing in Oct-Dec., 2012 is the most frequently cited paper on this topic (it has over 400 citations (as of August 1, 2017 according to Google scholar) and around 30,000 downloads in IEEE Xplore). Furthermore, many IEEE/ACM/international conferences (e.g., The 4th IEEE International Conference on Big Data and Cloud Computing (BDCloud2014), Sydney, Australia, 3rd International Conference on Cloud and Green Computing 2013 Karlsruhe, Germany, 6th EAI International Conference on Cloud Computing (2015), Daejeon, South Korea, The Seventh International Conference on Cloud Computing, GRIDs, and Virtualization (2016), Rome, Italy, IEEE/WIC/ACM Intelligent Agent Technology Conference 2015, Singapore) have included agent-based Cloud computing among their lists of topics.
Publications
Click here to view Professor Sim's selected papers on agent-based Cloud computing.