Abstract
In the future multi-cloud ecosystem, many cloud providers and consumers will interact to create, discover, negotiate and use software services. Cloud service brokers will play a central role in bringing providers and consumers together, assisting with software service creation (from abstract models to platform-specific deployments), multi-cloud translation (model-driven adaptation and deployment of services) quality assurance (governance; functional testing and monitoring), service continuity (failure prevention and recovery) and market competition (arbitrage; service optimization; service customization). The emerging ecosystem will be supported by common standards, service models, methods and mechanisms that will operate across a wide variety of platforms and infrastructure, and across disparate service protocols.