As cloud computing involves, integration of services of cloud can be too complex for cloud consumers to handle and manage. These services can be requested by cloud broker instead of contacting directly to the cloud provider.
A cloud broker is an entity that manages the performance, use and delivery of cloud services and negotiates the relation between cloud consumers and cloud providers.
Services Provided by Cloud Broker
In general, any cloud broker is authorized to provide services in three categories.
- Service Intermediation
- Service Aggregation
- Service Arbitrage
A broker is simply a negotiable party individual or business acts as intermediatory between the consumer who will be buying the cloud computing services and the company which will be provided with the cloud services.
Cloud computing is a type of distributed computing in which the services are available on demand. A broker acts as an intermediatory between two or more parties during negotiations. A broker works with the customer to migrate to the cloud and help him to understand work processes, provisioning needs, and data management requirements.
It must be very clear that broker only helps the customer to present a short list of recommended cloud providers and customer contacts of cloud vendors or cloud service providers.
A cloud broker is also given the power to distribute services across multiple vendors in the most cost-effective way and to reduce the complexity of environment of cloud computing. In addition to acting as an intermediary, cloud broker can also provide some additional services like duplication. encryption of data transfer in the network and assisting the data lifecycle management.
A broker can be charging on both sides i.e to the consumer as well as service provider. At the simplest, a broker can be charging of the project hourly fees for their time. There are also percentage tie-ups from the cloud provider for each conversion.
Cloud Broker Services Explained
Service Intermediation
Cloud broker helps to enhance any given service by improving some of its capabilities and providing value-added services to the cloud customers. Some of the improvements include identity management, mapping access to cloud services, performance reporting and enhancing the security of the system.
Service Aggregation
When it comes to service aggregation, cloud broker can be helpful in integrating multiple services into one or more new services. The broker provides data integration and also ensure that the data movement between the cloud consumer and multiple cloud providers.
Service Arbitrage
Almost similar to service aggregation, service arbitrage except the services being aggregated which are not fixed. Service arbitrage means the broker has the flexibility to choose services from multiple agencies.
Cloud Service Brokerage (CSB) or cloud broker have exactly the same role and responsibilities.