The Role of Autonomous Agents in Agent-as-a-Service Cloud Service Model

Cloud computing is a technology that enables the availability of services such as storage, server, and software from a virtually shared pool of resources. It is an on-demand service that makes it vastly available and configurable. There are three main traditional service models of the cloud that are classified according to the usage and configurations that are possible by the user. These service models are arranged in a layered architecture one on the top of another, and thus referred to sometimes as cloud computing stack. IaaS (Infrastructure-as-a-Service) provides virtual infrastructure components such as servers, network, operating systems, storage and many more at an on-demand service. PaaS (Platform-as-a-Service) offers platforms for development of the application and manages all the under-lying infrastructure of the application by the cloud provider. SaaS (Software-as-a-Service) offers software applications to the users where all the infrastructure, patches and updates are managed by the cloud provider. AaaS (Agent-as-a-Service) is an innovative and rapidly growing service that utilizes the power of autonomous artificial agents to deliver cloud services. AaaS employs the various characteristics of autonomous agents such as NLP (Natural Language Processing), data-driven insights, and anytime availability to provide cloud services to users that may lack the required domain knowledge that is required for utilizing other cloud service models. AaaS will deliver better results compared to the traditional service models because of automation of tasks, personalization of cloud services, business need -specific course of actions, quick resolution of issues, and efficient resource management. AaaS models will be offering a result-based service rather than a usage-based service compared to traditional cloud service models, where the user or organization will be paying for the outcomes of using the model rather than the amount of usage of the model. AaaS will be playing a key role in small startups and businesses where the required workforce for people managing the application or the required knowledge for configuring the cloud services is not available, as it eliminates these challenges and drives the organization to better results. AaaS is not limited to a single agent, but multiple agents can be created and each of them be assigned a scope of controls to manage and optimize the cloud services. This multi-agent environment in the cloud will help in efficient communication between agents so that if an issue or service cannot be resolved within the current agent's scope, it invokes the respective agent that has the scope of controls to resolve the issue or service. Thus, AaaS can be viewed as a technological advancement and a potential option to replace the traditional cloud service models.