A mixed ideal and anti-ideal DEA model: An application to evaluate cloud service providers

Abstract The rapid development of cloud computing and the sharp increase in the number of cloud service providers (CSPs) have resulted in many challenges in the suitability and selection of the best CSPs according to quality of service requirements. The main objective of this study is to propose three novel models based on the enhanced Russell model to increase the discrimination power in the evaluation and selection of CSPs. The proposed models are designed based on the distances to two special decision-making units (DMUs), namely the ideal DMU and the anti-ideal DMU. There are two advantages to the proposed ranking methods. First, they consider both pessimistic and optimistic scenarios of data envelopment analysis, so they are more equitable than methods that are based on only one of these scenarios. The second strength of this approach is its discrimination power, enabling it to provide a complete ranking for all CSPs. The proposed method can help customers to choose the most appropriate CSP while at the same time, it helps software developers to identify inefficient CSPs in order to improve their performance in the marketplace.