On demand elastic capacity planning for service auto-scaling

Cloud computing allows on demand elastic service scaling. The capability of a service to predict resource requirements for the next operational period defines how well it will exploit the elasticity of cloud computing in order to reduce operational costs. In this work, we consider a capacity planning process for service scale-out as an online pricing model. In particular, we study the impact of buffering service requests on revenues in various settings with allocation and maintenance costs. In addition, we analyze the incurred latency implied by buffering service requests. We believe that our insights will allow to significantly simplify predictions and mitigate the unknowns of future demands on resources.