Maximizing Liquidity in Cloud Markets through Standardization of Computational Resources

Low liquidity of cloud markets can result in market instability and inefficiency, preventing the successful implementation of ubiquitous computing on demand. To circumvent this issue, it has been suggested to channel demand and supply into a limited number of standardized services. These standardized services can even be automatically adapted to user requirements with the goal of continuously improving market performance. In this paper, we focus on answering how many standardized services should be placed in the market. This work is based on a new definition of liquidity for cloud resources, which in turn has been derived from liquidity definitions of financial markets. Using a simulation framework, we evaluate our method for estimating the optimal quantity of standardized services with respect to market liquidity and demonstrate the benefits of this approach in terms of increase in market efficiency and decrease in users' cost of participation in the market. The methods presented in this paper have the potential to be applied in other electronic markets as well.