Table 1 The relevant aspects for multi-cloud application management

Deployment

All

The PITMs and PSTMs models drive both application reasoning and deployment,

while execution-related activities should be reflected in PSTM models

Requirement

Reasoning

The user requirements drive application deployment reasoning,

Execution

while they are also used to restrain the way local scalability can be performed at runtime

Provider

Reasoning,

Provider models enable to matchmake and select suitable cloud offerings

Security

Reasoning

High- and low-level security requirements can drive the offering space

filtering, as well as the application deployment optimisation

according to security criteria apart from the quality ones and cost

Metric

Reasoning,

Metrics are used as optimisation criteria for deployment reasoning, while they

Execution

also explicate how application monitoring can be performed during the execution phase

Scalability

Execution

Scalability rules drive the local application reconfiguration during execution

Organisation

Reasoning,

An organisation can have accounts on certain providers which reduces the offering space

Deployment

only to them. The credentials to these providers enable the platform to act on user

behalf for deploying application components to suitable VMs

Location

Reasoning

Location requirements can be used to filter the offering space during deployment reasoning

Execution

Reasoning,

Previous execution history knowledge can be used to improve application deployment

Unit

All

Auxiliary aspect enabling to associate units of measurement to metrics and thus,

indirectly, to the conditions (i.e., SLOs) posed on them

Type

All

Auxiliary aspect enabling to provide types to language elements like metrics, as well as

to define different kinds of values that can be assigned to element properties