Data-as-a-service (DaaS) is the next emerging technology in cloud computing research. Small clouds operating as a group may exploit the DaaS efficiently to perform the substantial amount of work. In this paper, an auction framework is studied and evaluated when the small clouds are strategic in nature. We present the system model and formal definition of the problem and its experimental evaluation. Several auction DaaS-based mechanisms are proposed and their correctness and computational complexity is analysed. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first and realistic attempt to study the DaaS in a strategic setting. We have evaluated the proposed approach under various simulation scenarios to judge on its usefulness and efficiency