Towards a Sustainability-Aware Software Architecture Evaluation for Cloud-Based Software Services

The ubiquity of digital solutions integrating cloud-based software services necessitates sustainability awareness of such solutions. The integration of sustainability needs evaluation early in the software development life-cycle; preferably at the software architecture level. Although extensive literature is available for software architecture evaluation, not so much is observed for sustainability awareness, in general, and specifically for cloud-based software service architectures. In this study, we aim to create a blueprint of a software architecture evaluation method that has the potential to guide the sustainability-aware software architecture evaluation of cloud-based software services. Based on previous work, we identify 11 general steps grouped into 3 phases. We address challenges and provide recommendations for software architecture evaluation, emphasizing sustainability. Additionally, we propose sub-steps for trade-off analysis, impact analysis, and prioritization with a sustainability focus. The blueprint can be customized to evaluate cloud-based software services using specific sustainability criteria. Future work involves identifying sustainability metrics and testing the blueprint in an industrial setting for cloud-based software services.