Profit maximization model for cloud provider based on Windows Azure platform

This paper studies a cloud computing market where a cloud provider rents a set of computing resources from Windows Azure operated by Microsoft. The cloud provider can integrate value-added services to the resources. Then, the services can be sold to customers, and the cloud provider can earn a profit. Moreover, the cloud provider could save much cost and increase higher profit with the 6-month subscription plan offered by Windows Azure. However, the maximization of profit is not trivial to be achieved since the amount of the customers´ demand cannot be perfectly known in advance. Consequently, the subscription plan could not be optimally purchased. To deal with such a maximization problem, the paper proposes a stochastic programming model with two-stage recourse. The numerical studies show that the model can maximize the profit under the customers´ demand uncertainty.