Cloud infrastructure for providing tools as a service: quality attributes and potential solutions

Cloud computing is being increasingly adopted in various domains for providing on-demand infrastructure and Software as a service (SaaS) by leveraging the utility computing model and virtualization technologies. One of the domains, where cloud computing is expected to gain huge traction is Global Software Development (GSD) that has emerged as a popular software development model. Despite several promised benefits, GSD is characterized by not only technical issues but also the complexities associated with its processes. One of the key challenges of GSD is to provide appropriate tools more efficiently and cost-effectively. Moreover, variations in tools available/used by different GSD team members can also pose challenges. We assert that providing Tools as a Service (TaaS) to GSD teams through a cloud-based infrastructure can be a promising solution to address the tools related challenges in GSD projects. Through an extensive review of the relevant literature on GSD and Cloud Computing, we have identified a set of quality attributes and potential architectural solutions for a cloud-based infrastructure that can provide TaaS to GSD teams. This paper outlines the promised benefits of TaaS to GSD teams, describes the expected quality attributes of a cloud-based infrastructure and how these quality attributes can be achieved. We also present a reference architecture for a cloud-based infrastructure to provide TaaS in GSD projects and describe its use with a detailed scenario of GSD projects.