Cloud Computing as a Platform for Monetizing Data Services: A Two-Sided Game Business Model

We argue in this paper that the role of the cloud should be reshaped from being a passive virtual market to become an active platform for monetizing data. The objective is to enable the cloud to be an active platform that can help data providers reach a wider set of data consumers. This will allow these consumers to be exposed to a larger variety of data that benefits data analytic applications. To achieve this vision, we propose a novel game theoretical model, which consists of a mix of cooperative and competitive strategies. The players of the game are the data providers, cloud platform, and cloud users. The strategies of the players are modeled using the two-sided market theory that takes into consideration the network effects (externalities) among the players. Simulations conducted using Amazon and google clustered data show that the proposed model improves the total surplus of involved parties in terms of cloud resources provision and monetary profits compared to the current merchant model.