The application of bi-level programming with Stackelberg equilibrium in cloud computing based on simplified swarm optimization

Cloud computing (CC) is a configurable resource model that can be rapidly provisioned and released with minimal management effort or service provider interaction. In CC services, buyers and sellers always have strong (leader) or weak (follower) influence, and leaders have the authority to make decisions. Considering how to only reduce the buyer´s cost or increase the seller´s profit does not reflect the economic situation in reality. Hence, a novel model based on the Stackelberg leadership is proposed and formulated by bi-level programming (BLP) to analyze such non-cooperative decision relationships in CC. A new method called bi-level simplified swarm optimization (BLSSO) is developed to solve the BLP. This BLSSO uses a dynamic regional search and guarantees global convergence. Computational results show that the proposed BLSSO technique is very competitive and satisfies a number of criteria, including the number of times the best solution is found, the average number of the earliest best solution found, and the total computational time. Thus, both the Stackelberg leadership and the BLSSO can provide decision makers with a different view on CC.