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arxiv: 2102.12717 · v2 · submitted 2021-02-25 · 💻 cs.DC · cs.DL· cs.NI

Cloud Broker: A Systematic Mapping Study

Hoda Taheri , Faeze Ramezani , Neda Mohammadi , Parisa Khoshdel , Bahareh Taghavi , Neda Khorasani , Saeid Abrishami , Abbas Rasoolzadegan This is my paper

Pith reviewed 2026-05-24 14:05 UTC · model grok-4.3

classification 💻 cs.DC cs.DLcs.NI
keywords cloud brokersystematic mapping studycloud computingmiddlewareliterature reviewresearch trendscloud servicessoftware engineering
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The pith

A systematic mapping study selects 496 high-quality papers on cloud brokers from 2009 to 2019 to address eight research questions.

A machine-rendered reading of the paper's core claim, the machinery that carries it, and where it could break.

The paper performs a systematic mapping study to organize existing research on cloud brokers, which serve as independent middleware negotiating between customers and providers. It applies a three-tier search strategy of manual search, backward snowballing, and database search, followed by quality criteria to filter results. From 1,928 initial search spaces, 171 were retained, yielding 1,298 articles from which 496 high-quality papers were chosen. These papers, published in journals, conferences, and workshops, are then examined against eight research questions covering critical topics, trends, techniques, evaluation methods, yearly output, active contributors, and publication venues. The result supplies a structured overview of the cloud broker literature.

Core claim

Through the three-tier search and quality filtering process, 496 high-quality papers on cloud brokers were identified and mapped to answer eight research questions on the field's most critical topics, existing trends and issues, active researchers and countries, commonly used techniques, evaluation methods, research volume by year and venue, and key search spaces.

What carries the argument

The three-tier search strategy (manual search, backward snowballing, and database search) combined with defined qualitative criteria to select the highest-quality and most relevant studies from extracted search spaces.

If this is right

  • The most debated topics and existing issues in cloud broker research become identifiable for targeted follow-up work.
  • Commonly used techniques for building cloud brokers and their evaluation methods are summarized across the selected studies.
  • Active researchers, countries, and publication venues are mapped to show concentration of effort in the field.
  • Trends in research volume by year and place of publication are documented from 2009 through 2019.
  • The eight research questions receive answers based on analysis of the 496 papers regarding techniques, contributors, and topics.

Where Pith is reading between the lines

These are editorial extensions of the paper, not claims the author makes directly.

  • The resulting map of techniques and gaps could directly inform the design of new cloud broker prototypes that address under-explored evaluation methods.
  • Listing active contributors and countries may enable targeted collaboration or funding allocation in distributed systems research.
  • The documented trends in publication venues could help researchers prioritize submission targets for future cloud computing studies.
  • Extending the same three-tier method to adjacent areas such as edge computing brokers would test whether similar patterns appear.

Load-bearing premise

The three-tier search strategy combined with the stated qualitative criteria fully captures the relevant high-quality literature without systematic omission of important venues or inclusion of low-relevance work.

What would settle it

Identification of a substantial number of high-quality cloud broker papers published 2009-2019 that were not captured in the final set of 496 studies would indicate incompleteness in the mapping.

Figures

Figures reproduced from arXiv: 2102.12717 by Abbas Rasoolzadegan, Bahareh Taghavi, Faeze Ramezani, Hoda Taheri, Neda Khorasani, Neda Mohammadi, Parisa Khoshdel, Saeid Abrishami.

Figure 1
Figure 1. Figure 1: Multilevel research tree containing the main topics and sub-topics in the field • Obtaining a set of high-quality studies: For obtaining a complete set of high-quality studies in the cloud broker field, a complete procedure has been designed as the proposed search strategy. This offers the advantages of the two famous search methods, i.e., SLR and SMS. For this reason, the present review is believed to be … view at source ↗
Figure 2
Figure 2. Figure 2: Number of included papers per year 3.1 How active is the field of brokering and how is the distribution of selected studies by type and publication year (journal, conference, and workshop)? (RQ1) One of the primary RQs calls for investigating the fre￾quency of published papers in the field of cloud brokers from the advent of cloud brokers (2009) through the end of 2019. In consideration of the studies extr… view at source ↗
Figure 3
Figure 3. Figure 3: Published papers per topic per year 0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 [PITH_FULL_IMAGE:figures/full_fig_p008_3.png] view at source ↗
Figure 5
Figure 5. Figure 5: Total extracted studies per search phase [PITH_FULL_IMAGE:figures/full_fig_p009_5.png] view at source ↗
Figure 6
Figure 6. Figure 6: Active researchers according to the number [PITH_FULL_IMAGE:figures/full_fig_p009_6.png] view at source ↗
Figure 4
Figure 4. Figure 4: Included papers per query This analysis can identify noteworthy institutes and coun￾tries that most significantly impact the advancement of the cloud broker field. The data obtained from the extraction phase is used to conduct this analysis. Complete infor￾mation about the final included study set can be found in 𝑆𝑢𝑝𝑝𝐹𝑖𝑙𝑒𝐸1,𝑇5 . Since a study may have multiple authors with different affiliations, all affil… view at source ↗
Figure 8
Figure 8. Figure 8: Percentage of publications per topic 3.5 Which forms of empirical evaluation have been used? What are the tools available to support field approaches? Which techniques are used more in the field? (RQ5) Additional valuable information extracted from the proposed SMS regards investigating the popularity of evaluation methods in cloud brokerage. The empirical evaluation features testbed, practical, and simula… view at source ↗
Figure 9
Figure 9. Figure 9: Evolution of the publication of research studies in client [PITH_FULL_IMAGE:figures/full_fig_p013_9.png] view at source ↗
Figure 10
Figure 10. Figure 10: Evolution of the publication of research studies in provider [PITH_FULL_IMAGE:figures/full_fig_p013_10.png] view at source ↗
Figure 11
Figure 11. Figure 11: Empirical evaluation Fig.3 demonstrates that a significant amount of research has been conducted with the aim of introducing effective solutions for the topics of composition and integration, se￾lection, and service allocation. To meet the needs of customers in cloud environments, the allocation of resources is provided in a web platform and is kept elastic and virtual. With the expansion of cloud environ… view at source ↗
Figure 12
Figure 12. Figure 12: Techniques used to implement brokers in the included studies [PITH_FULL_IMAGE:figures/full_fig_p014_12.png] view at source ↗
Figure 13
Figure 13. Figure 13: Relation between extracted topics and NIST roles [PITH_FULL_IMAGE:figures/full_fig_p014_13.png] view at source ↗
Figure 15
Figure 15. Figure 15: Types of service layers in cloud computing [PITH_FULL_IMAGE:figures/full_fig_p015_15.png] view at source ↗
Figure 16
Figure 16. Figure 16: Types of brokers In fact, it was not until 2012, with the advent of inter-cloud environments, that the topic of service composition started gaining much importance due to the complex demands of customers, expansion of cloud environments, and rising competition among providers in offering better services. Fig.3 demonstrates that, from 2009 to 2019, the trend of publishing studies on composition and integra… view at source ↗
read the original abstract

In a cloud environment, a cloud broker is an important entity that works as an independent middleware between cloud customers and providers to address issues and conduct negotiations related to satisfying both customer preferences and service provider profits. In recent years, researchers have published many articles which directly or indirectly address this research area. A systematic method is vital for extracting all search spaces (journals, conferences, and workshops) and primary studies (articles) conducted in the cloud broker field and then selecting some of the highest quality studies. The proposed systematic review includes a comprehensive three-tier search strategy (manual search, backward snowballing, and database search). The detailed explanation of the reviewing process is inserted in Appendix A. In the search methodology, qualitative criteria have been defined to select studies with the highest quality and the most relevance among all search spaces. In the present study, out of 1,928 extracted search spaces, 171 search spaces have been selected based on the defined quality criteria. Then, 1,298 articles have been extracted from these 171 selected search spaces. As a result, 496 high-quality papers have been selected among the mentioned papers. The chosen papers were published in prestigious journals, conferences, and workshops from 2009 through 2019. In the current Systematic Mapping Study (SMS), eight research questions have been designed for the purpose of identifying information that is significant to the cloud broker field, such as the most critical and debated topics, existing trends and issues, active researchers and countries, commonly used techniques in building cloud brokers, evaluation methods, the amount of research conducted by year and the place of publication, and the most important active search spaces.

Editorial analysis

A structured set of objections, weighed in public.

Desk editor's note, referee report, simulated authors' rebuttal, and a circularity audit. Tearing a paper down is the easy half of reading it; the pith above is the substance, this is the friction.

Referee Report

2 major / 1 minor

Summary. The manuscript presents a systematic mapping study (SMS) on cloud brokers as middleware entities in cloud environments. It describes a three-tier search strategy (manual search, backward snowballing, and database search) applied to literature from 2009–2019. From 1,928 extracted search spaces, 171 were selected via qualitative criteria; 1,298 articles were then extracted, yielding 496 high-quality papers. These papers are analyzed to address eight research questions on critical topics, trends, techniques, active contributors/countries, evaluation methods, publication volume/venues, and active search spaces.

Significance. If the selection methodology proves rigorous and complete, the SMS would provide a useful consolidation of the cloud broker literature, identifying dominant research themes, publication patterns, and potential gaps for future work. The scale (496 papers) offers breadth that could serve as a reference point for the subfield, though its value hinges directly on the transparency and reproducibility of the filtering steps.

major comments (2)
  1. [Abstract and search methodology] Abstract and search methodology section: The claim that 171 search spaces and 496 papers were selected as 'highest quality' and 'most relevant' rests on qualitative criteria whose explicit formulation (inclusion/exclusion rules, scoring rubric, or decision thresholds) is deferred entirely to Appendix A. Without these details in the main text or a self-contained summary, the central mapping claim cannot be verified or reproduced from the provided material.
  2. [Search methodology] Search methodology: No inter-rater reliability statistic (e.g., Cohen's kappa) or description of how multiple reviewers resolved disagreements is supplied for the selection of search spaces or papers. Given the reliance on qualitative judgment to reduce 1,928 spaces to 171 and 1,298 articles to 496, the absence of such metrics undermines confidence in the consistency of the final set.
minor comments (1)
  1. [Abstract] The abstract reports extracting 1,298 articles from the 171 spaces but does not explicitly state whether this count precedes or follows initial screening; a clearer step-by-step flow diagram or numbered list would improve readability.

Simulated Author's Rebuttal

2 responses · 0 unresolved

We thank the referee for the constructive feedback on methodology transparency and reproducibility. We address each major comment point-by-point below, proposing revisions where they strengthen the manuscript without altering its core claims.

read point-by-point responses

  1. Referee: [Abstract and search methodology] Abstract and search methodology section: The claim that 171 search spaces and 496 papers were selected as 'highest quality' and 'most relevant' rests on qualitative criteria whose explicit formulation (inclusion/exclusion rules, scoring rubric, or decision thresholds) is deferred entirely to Appendix A. Without these details in the main text or a self-contained summary, the central mapping claim cannot be verified or reproduced from the provided material.

    Authors: We agree that a self-contained summary of the criteria belongs in the main text. We will add a concise paragraph in the Search Methodology section describing the inclusion/exclusion rules, quality scoring approach, and decision thresholds used to reduce 1,928 search spaces to 171 and 1,298 articles to 496. Full details remain in Appendix A for completeness. revision: yes

  2. Referee: [Search methodology] Search methodology: No inter-rater reliability statistic (e.g., Cohen's kappa) or description of how multiple reviewers resolved disagreements is supplied for the selection of search spaces or papers. Given the reliance on qualitative judgment to reduce 1,928 spaces to 171 and 1,298 articles to 496, the absence of such metrics undermines confidence in the consistency of the final set.

    Authors: The selection was performed by the author team with disagreements resolved via discussion and consensus; no independent raters were used and thus no Cohen's kappa was computed. We will insert a brief description of this consensus process in the revised methodology section. Because the study design did not include separate raters for statistical IRR measurement, we cannot provide such metrics retrospectively. revision: partial

Circularity Check

0 steps flagged

No circularity: mapping study enumerates external literature without derivations or self-referential reductions

full rationale

This is a systematic mapping study whose central output is an enumeration and categorization of 496 external papers selected from 1,928 search spaces. No equations, predictions, fitted parameters, or first-principles derivations exist that could reduce to inputs by construction. The methodology (three-tier search plus qualitative criteria) is described as a process for selecting external work; it contains no self-definitional loops, fitted-input predictions, load-bearing self-citations, uniqueness theorems, or ansatz smuggling. The result is self-contained against external benchmarks and receives the default non-circularity finding.

Axiom & Free-Parameter Ledger

0 free parameters · 1 axioms · 0 invented entities

The mapping rests on the domain assumption that established SMS protocols produce an unbiased and complete view of the field; no free parameters or invented entities are introduced.

axioms (1)
  • domain assumption Standard systematic mapping study methodology (manual search + snowballing + database search plus quality filters) is sufficient to identify all significant cloud-broker literature without material bias.
    Invoked in the description of the three-tier strategy and quality criteria selection process.

pith-pipeline@v0.9.0 · 5866 in / 1214 out tokens · 20604 ms · 2026-05-24T14:05:52.684283+00:00 · methodology

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