Three-staged cloud computing service supply chain coordination by combined contract

We mainly design a revenue sharing combined buy-back contract to coordinate the three-staged cloud computing service supply chain. This discussed supply chain includes one application service provider (ASP), one platform service provider (APP) and one application infrastructure provider (AIP). AIP supplies the infrastructure and computer capacity to APP; APP supplies the application platform to ASP; ASP sells the value-added application services to the market. We discuss four coordination strategies for the cloud computing service supply chain: namely, centralized control, decentralized control (wholesale price contract), revenue sharing contract and combined contract. We first prove that the wholesale price contract can coordinate the services supply chain, but AIP and APP cannot get a large portion of supply chain´s profits. Moreover, we also prove that the revenue sharing contract cannot coordinate the supply chain. Finally, we design a revenue sharing combined buy-back contract, which can perfectly coordinate the three-staged cloud computing services supply chain.