Towards cloud services marketplaces

When we think of Marketplaces we think of places where third parties bring their goods for consumers to find them and transact in some convenient way. When we take this idea to the cloud services space we think of third party services providers that bring their cloud services, and services consumers that expect to match the capabilities that best suit their needs with a service offering. Services as opposed to goods vary in the way they function, in the way that they get activated, and vary in the way they surface the requirements they fulfill. For the consumer the task does not get easier, and to find a solution tailored to their solution may be a trying task. In this paper we explore the landscape of cloud services marketplaces, where we are, a perspective of an architecture, and in particular some of the enablers that would help consumers engage with the marketplace in an easy to use and successful manner.