Using SLA Mapping to Increase Market Liquidity

Research into computing resource markets has mainly considered the question of which market mechanism provides a fair resource allocation. It has not been discussed how a large variety of resource types influences the liquidity of resources in the market. Markets containing large numbers of buyers and sellers for heterogeneous resources suffer from a low likelihood of matching offers and requests (defined through contracts, SLAs). These markets are less attractive for traders because of the high risk of not being able to trade resources (liquidity). We suggest a solution that derives SLA templates from a large number of heterogeneous SLAs in the market, and, by using these templates instead of the original SLAs, facilitate SLA mapping (i.e. mapping of offers to requests). The usefulness of this approach is demonstrated through simulation results and a comparison with an alternative approach in which SLAs are predefined.