Flexible SLA Negotiation Using Semantic Annotations

Moving towards a global market of services requires flexible infrastructures that will deal with the inevitable semantic heterogeneity that occurs during the negotiation that precedes the trading of a service. In order to reach an agreement, the negotiating parties need to understand the concepts describing the Quality of Service (QoS) terms which are part of the Service Level Agreement (SLA). The use of semantic annotations can increase the level of flexibility and automation, allowing the two parties to use their own terminology as long as it is related to the commonly understood conceptual model. This paper discusses how SLA negotiation will benefit from the use of a lightweight backwards compatible semantic annotation mechanism.