A Resource Provision Strategy for Software-as-a-Service in Cloud Computing

The business model of Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) is gradually becoming more refined. Reducing the operation cost of cloud service providers while maintaining service efficiency has become an important topic. The present study focuses on suggesting a resource provisioning strategy for load changes during the operations of an SaaS cloud service provider (CSP). The strategy is to suggest corresponding provision portfolio configurations that can reduce operation cost and maintain efficiency of applications based on surplus resources after reducing the use of virtual machines rented for the SaaS CSP. The underlying concept is identical to memory paging management in operating systems: minimizing fragmented space to utilize resources effectively. Testing results confirm that the strategy suggested in this study can effectively configure a provision portfolio with reduced operation cost. Compared with methods suggested by IaaS CSPs in the mainstream market, the method proposed in the present study can reduce the hourly rental of virtual machines by 40% and enable SaaS CSPs to realize considerable profit by reducing cost.