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A primary driving force of the recent cloud computing paradigm is its inherent cost effectiveness. As in many basic utilities, such as electricity and water, consumers/clients in cloud computing environments are charged based on their service usage, hence the term `pay-per-use'. While this pricing model is very appealing for both service providers and consumers, fluctuating service request volume and conflicting objectives (e.g., profit vs. response time) between providers and consumers hinder its effective application to cloud computing environments. In this paper, we address the problem of service request scheduling in cloud computing systems. We consider a three-tier cloud structure, which consists of infrastructure vendors, service providers and consumers, the latter two parties are particular interest to us. Clearly, scheduling strategies in this scenario should satisfy the objectives of both parties. Our contributions …