Paper Title
A Critical Review of Resource Allocation Strategies for Improving the Allocation Efficiency in a Cloud Environment

Abstract
Efficient Cloud Computing aims at the utilization of heterogeneous and distributed computing resources for handling user requests for various cloud services. Management of cloud services is very challenging due to the wide and versatile nature of this computing domain. This paper provides a deep insight into resource allocation and management in a cloud environment, a review of various allocation strategies is presented and compared for their respective pros and cons. Finally, the advantages and limitations of various allocation strategies with the use of Virtual Machines (VM) are identified and summarized for further research prospects. Keywords - Cloud Computing, Resource Allocation, Resource Provisioning, Virtual Machine, Migration.