Cloud computing is an exciting concept that propels the development of technologies, the creation and expansion of businesses and the rapid prototyping of new ideas. Utilizing the advantages the cloud offers to their fullest potential is not a simple task. Often users struggle with the technological aspects, waste resources or fall behind by not taking the risk to use such services due to a lack of standards for performance descriptions, the steep learning curve to get familiar with the cloud, and the abundance of available services. This work proposes the development of a cloud broker with three key components that utilize a performance oriented resource and application model to 1) compare arbitrary resources and applications in a fair manner based on general information, collected with standard benchmark tools 2) select the optimal infrastructure for any application by estimating its resource consumption and execution time and 3) automatically create and manage the selected infrastructure as well as the application deployment. The prototypical proof-of-concept implementations along with the newly developed resource and application model presented in this work show, that it is indeed possible with these components to increase the usability and efficiency of cloud computing by enabling a better comprehension of resource and application performance in cloud environments and by reducing the necessary time and effort to deploy arbitrary applications in the cloud.weiterlesen