An Inter-Cloud Meta-Scheduling (ICMS) simulation framework: architecture and evaluationAn Inter-Cloud Meta-Scheduling (ICMS) simulation framework: architecture and evaluation Peer-Reviewed Journal Publication Δημοσίευση σε Περιοδικό με Κριτές 2019-11-142018enInter-cloud is an approach that facilitates scalable resource provisioning across multiple cloud infrastructures. In this paper, we focus on the performance optimization of Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) using the meta-scheduling paradigm to achieve an improved job scheduling across multiple clouds. We propose a novel inter-cloud job scheduling framework and implement policies to optimize performance of participating clouds. The framework, named as Inter-Cloud Meta-Scheduling (ICMS), is based on a novel message exchange mechanism to allow optimization of job scheduling metrics. The resulting system offers improved flexibility, robustness and decentralization. We implemented a toolkit named 'Simulating the Inter-Cloud' (SimIC) to perform the design and implementation of different inter-cloud entities and policies in the ICMS framework. An experimental analysis is produced for job executions in inter-cloud and a performance is presented for a number of parameters such as job execution, makespan, and turnaround times. The results highlight that the overall performance of individual clouds for selected parameters and configuration is improved when these are brought together under the proposed ICMS framework.http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/IEEE Transactions on Services Computing1115-19 Σωτηριαδης Στελιος Sotiriadis Stelios Bessis, Nik, 1967- Anjum Ashiq Buyya, Rajkumar Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Cloud computing Inter-clouds Interoperable clouds Meta-scheduling systems