R P Sundarraj

Utility computing models such as cloud computing provide a variety of computing services using several pricing options. Flexibility of requirements and availability of pricing options, enable a consumer to make trade-offs between cost and time. These trade-offs are governed by consumers' behavior with respect to how they discount price vis-à-vis time of delivery. In this paper, we study this trade-off for the cloud-computing context, based on theoretical models from the time-discounting (intertemporal) literature. We test this model using an experimental study with 162 participants.

Cloud computing offers information technology resources like infrastructure, platform and software in the form of on-demand services. Adoption of cloud yields several benefits to the consumer and these benefits could be realized to their fullest potential in a market based mechanism. At present, commercial marketplaces for cloud-based services are in their infancy. Nevertheless, we are gradually moving towards marketplaces like Amazon AWS. In future, electronic agents would negotiate on the behalf of consumers in procuring a service from cloud markets. In negotiating a cloud-service, the agents should be capable of representing their principals' preferences. These preferences help the agents to improve the outcome of a negotiation. The possibility of a successful outcome can be enhanced by exploiting trade-offs that are driven by preferences among multiple issues. One such preference is time preference which can modeled using time discount functions and is useful in generating price and time trade-offs. In this paper, we propose a hyperbolic discounting model based on the theory of intertemporal choice to generate price and time trade-offs. Further, we provide an algorithm to integrate hyperbolic discounting function based trade-off model with a time dependent tactic (TDT) based concession model in the negotiation process. © 2012 IEEE.

Researchers have advocated that the acquisition of user preferences is important to the successful adoption of electronic negotiation systems. In this paper, we focus on one such preference, namely time preference, wherein the price of a good/service varies according to the delivery/consumption time. Time preference is a behavioral aspect that varies across buyers. We discuss how different types of preferences can be elicited, represented and integrated with electronic negotiations. We discuss three experiments to study the effect of time preferences on negotiation. The first is a preference elicitation experiment involving 36 subjects. The next two are agent-to-agent negotiation experiments, one based on the individual preferences obtained earlier and the other based on an expanded dataset on both individual preferences as well as negotiation parameters. The agent-based experiment compares outcomes and efficiencies between the standard exponential discounting model and two behavioral models of time preference. Our results bring out the preferences of subjects, as well as the extent to which negotiation is affected and enhanced by the incorporation of time-preferences.