Realizing the Flexible Integration of Cloud Resources into Workflows

The hosting of large on-premise computational resources is common practice. Cloud Computing offers a promising, alternative infrastructure for using scalable on demand off-premise resources. However, outsourcing whole applications is not a cost optimal solution in some scenarios, because the already existing on-premise resources are not considered. A flexible integration of additional resources from the cloud to compensate a shortage of suitable on-premise resources is a tradeoff between costs and efficiency. This article presents a realization of this approach in a crosscloud environment using the concept of workflows. The realization is evaluated by the development of a prototype.