Enacting global competition in local supply chain environments: German “Chemieparks” and the micro-politics of employment relations in a CME

Drawing upon the debate on institutional mediation of macro processes, we examine how multinational enterprises (MNEs) engage with global competition through restructuring their operations situated in local supply chain environments and how employment relations (ER) of coordinated market economies are reconfigured in the course of this restructuring process. Our empirical setting is the German chemical industry which is both an exemplar of coordinated labour-management-collaboration and highly exposed to global competition. Using a comparative case study design, we observe how MNEs re-structure two local production sites into ‘Chemieparks’. Our empirical data suggest that local agency diverges in the extent to which the social partnership type of ER is maintained or disrupted. Furthermore, we highlight the importance of micro-political practices for understanding the restructuring outcome as well as the local enactment and change of macro institutions within production networks as meso-level arenas for institutional mediation

Cloud computing: Case study

The interest of applications in adopting cloud computing has grown steadily. Requirements for users to plan for provisioning turned more flexible, and allows to increase them when there is a rise in service demand. To understand the different services that the "cloud" can offer to companies and users, we wrote the State-of-the-Art. Studies over already deployed cloud-based infrastructures consume too many resources. Simulation tools have become key to the evolution of cloud computing, and one of the most valued for this task it is CloudSim. The practical part of the Bachelor degree thesis is based on a web service model from this toolkit, and we have modelled its workload to process with different probability distributions. The default model provided by the program presented some limitations when the workload has large differences, so we have proposed a new model.El interés de aplicaciones para adoptar el cloud computing no ha parado de crecer. Se flexibilizan los requisitos de los usuarios a la hora de planificar el suministro de recursos, y permite incrementarlos cuando hay un aumento de la demanda del servicio. Para entender el funcionamiento de los diferentes servicios que puede ofrecer la "nube" tanto a empresas como a usuarios, hemos escrito el State-of-the-Art. Hacer estudios sobre estructuras desplegadas en la "nube" consume demasiados recursos. Las herramientas de simulación se han vuelto clave para la evolución del cloud computing y una de las más valoradas para esta tarea es el CloudSim. La parte práctica del trabajo final de grado se basa en un modelo de servicio web de esta herramienta, y hemos modelado su carga de trabajo a procesar con diferentes distribuciones de probabilidad. El modelo que ofrece el programa por defecto presenta ciertas limitaciones cuando la carga de trabajo varía demasiado, y hemos propuesto un nuevo modelo.L’interès d’aplicacions per adoptar el cloud computing no ha parat de créixer. Es flexibilitzen els requisits dels usuaris a l’hora de planificar l’aprovisionament de recursos, i permet incrementar-los quan hi ha un augment de la demanda del servei. Per tal d’entendre el funcionament dels diferents serveis que pot oferir el “núvol” tant a empreses com a usuaris, hem escrit l’State-of-the-Art. Fer estudis sobre estructures desplegades al “núvol” consumeix masses recursos. Les eines de simulació s’han tornat clau per a la evolució del cloud computing i una de les més valorades per aquesta tasca és el CloudSim. La part pràctica del treball final de grau es basa en un model de servei web d’aquesta eina, i hem modelat la seva càrrega de treball a processar amb diferents distribucions de probabilitat. El model que ofereix el programa per defecte presenta certes limitacions quan la carrega de treball varia massa, i hem proposat un nou model

Scalable service-oriented replication with flexible consistency guarantee in the cloud

Replication techniques are widely applied in and for cloud to improve scalability and availability. In such context, the well-understood problem is how to guarantee consistency amongst different replicas and govern the trade-off between consistency and scalability requirements. Such requirements are often related to specific services and can vary considerably in the cloud. However, a major drawback of existing service-oriented replication approaches is that they only allow either restricted consistency or none at all. Consequently, service-oriented systems based on such replication techniques may violate consistency requirements or not scale well. In this paper, we present a Scalable Service Oriented Replication (SSOR) solution, a middleware that is capable of satisfying applications’ consistency requirements when replicating cloud-based services. We introduce new formalism for describing services in service-oriented replication. We propose the notion of consistency regions and relevant service oriented requirements policies, by which trading between consistency and scalability requirements can be handled within regions. We solve the associated sub-problem of atomic broadcasting by introducing a Multi-fixed Sequencers Protocol (MSP), which is a requirements aware variation of the traditional fixed sequencer approach. We also present a Region-based Election Protocol (REP) that elastically balances the workload amongst sequencers. Finally, we experimentally evaluate our approach under different loads, to show that the proposed approach achieves better scalability with more flexible consistency constraints when compared with the state-of-the-art replication technique