This paper discusses a business-oriented phenomenon called the Bullwhip Effect that affects the efficiency of traditional supply chains, identifying how it applies to the world of Cloud Computing. Comparisons are made between a traditional supply chain and the Cloud supply chain in order to observe how these relate with each other. In doing so, the occurrence of Virtual Machine (VM) Sprawl in Cloud data-centers is seen as a derivative of the Bullwhip Effect, such that the indicators and mitigation strategies from traditional supply chains could be applied in the context of Cloud supply chains. Indicators were derived for each of the problem areas, which can be seen as a sign of the VM Sprawl in a specific Cloud supply chain. Approachesto automation and monitoring are also considered, and a prototypical implementation is described.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.