International Business Machines Corporation
QoS-optimized selection of a cloud microservices provider

Abstract:

A microservices-management system intercepts a request for a cloud-based microservice sent by a microservices-architecture application. The system selects an optimal cloud-service provider from a group of candidate providers capable of delivering the microservice and then forwards the request to the optimal provider. The optimal provider is selected by drawing cognitive inferences from stored blockchain records that each describe a characteristic of a previous delivery of the requested service. Each record is generated by one of the candidate providers when delivering an instance of the microservice, regardless of whether the provider is in a trusted relationship with the application owner. The providers are barred by blockchain's intrinsic security features from altering or deleting previously stored blockchain records. Upon delivery of the service, the system compares the actual quality or cost of the delivery with predicted values in order to learn how to more effectively select optimal providers.