Containerization in Multi-Cloud Environment: Roles, Strategies, Challenges, and Solutions for Effective Implementation

2024-03-01

arXiv.org

AI Summary

Research on containerization in multi-cloud environments remains fragmented, lacking a systematic, up-to-date synthesis. Method: We conduct a Systematic Mapping Study (SMS) spanning 2013–2024, analyzing 121 high-quality publications through bibliometric analysis, thematic coding, and ISO/IEC 25010 quality attribute modeling. Contribution/Results: We propose the first four-level classification framework—“Theme–Strategy–Quality Attribute–Tactic”—identifying four core research themes, 98 implementation strategies, 10 critical quality attributes, and 47 corresponding architectural tactics. Innovatively, we introduce a two-dimensional challenge-solution taxonomy organized along Security, Automation, Deployment, and Monitoring dimensions. This yields the first structured, reusable landscape of multi-cloud containerization, bridging theoretical research and industrial practice by supporting architecture design and technology selection—thereby addressing a longstanding gap in systematic knowledge integration for this domain.

Technology Category

• Intelligent Robots: Multi-Robot Systems
• Machine Learning: Multi-class/Multi-label Learning & Extreme Classification
• Multiagent Systems: Agent/AI Theories and Architectures

Application Category

• Systems and Infrastructure for Web, Mobile and WoT: Cloud, edge and content delivery systems for the Web
• Security and Privacy: Data transparency and provenance
• Web Mining and Content Analysis: Normalization, clustering, classification, and summarization of Web text

Abstract

Containerization in a multi-cloud environment facilitates workload portability and optimized resource utilization. Containerization in multi-cloud environments has received significant attention in recent years both from academic research and industrial development perspectives. However, there exists no effort to systematically investigate the state of research on this topic. The aim of this research is to systematically identify and categorize the multiple aspects of containerization in multi-cloud environment. We conducted the Systematic Mapping Study (SMS) on the literature published between January 2013 and July 2024. One hundred twenty one studies were selected and the key results are: (1) Four leading themes on containerization in multi-cloud environment are identified: 'Scalability and High Availability', 'Performance and Optimization', 'Security and Privacy', and 'Multi-Cloud Container Monitoring and Adaptation'. (2) Ninety-eight patterns and strategies for containerization in multi-cloud environment were classified across 10 subcategories and 4 categories. (3) Ten quality attributes considered were identified with 47 associated tactics. (4) Four catalogs consisting of challenges and solutions related to security, automation, deployment, and monitoring were introduced. The results of this SMS will assist researchers and practitioners in pursuing further studies on containerization in multi-cloud environment and developing specialized solutions for containerization applications in multi-cloud environment.

Problem

• Container Technology
• Cloud Environments
• Challenges and Solutions

Innovation

• Multi-cloud Environments
• Container Technology
• Systematic Review