A Virtualized Infrastructure for IVR Applications as Services

Interactive Voice Response (IVR) applications are ubiquitous nowadays. Automated attendant, bank teller and automated surveys are a few of many applications requiring IVR capabilities. Cloud computing is a paradigm gaining a lot of momentum. It has three major service models: Infrastructure as a service – IaaS, Platform as a service – PaaS, and Software as a Service – SaaS. It offers also several inherent benefits such as scalability, resource efficiency and easy introduction of new functionality. However, very few, if any, IVR applications are offered today in cloud-based settings despite of all its potential benefits. This thesis deals with IaaS. Accordingly, we propose a novel architecture for a virtualized IVR infrastructure that relies on RESTFul Web services. The architecture proposes IVR substrates that are virtualized, composed, and assembled on the fly to build IVR applications. As a proof of concept, we have implemented an IaaS prototype on which performance measurements have been done to evaluate our architecture concept. In addition, a simple proof of concept PaaS consisting of a graphical user interface (GUI)has been built to enable the development and management of simple IVR services in the SaaS layer

A Decade of Research in Fog computing: Relevance, Challenges, and Future Directions

Recent developments in the Internet of Things (IoT) and real-time applications, have led to the unprecedented growth in the connected devices and their generated data. Traditionally, this sensor data is transferred and processed at the cloud, and the control signals are sent back to the relevant actuators, as part of the IoT applications. This cloud-centric IoT model, resulted in increased latencies and network load, and compromised privacy. To address these problems, Fog Computing was coined by Cisco in 2012, a decade ago, which utilizes proximal computational resources for processing the sensor data. Ever since its proposal, fog computing has attracted significant attention and the research fraternity focused at addressing different challenges such as fog frameworks, simulators, resource management, placement strategies, quality of service aspects, fog economics etc. However, after a decade of research, we still do not see large-scale deployments of public/private fog networks, which can be utilized in realizing interesting IoT applications. In the literature, we only see pilot case studies and small-scale testbeds, and utilization of simulators for demonstrating scale of the specified models addressing the respective technical challenges. There are several reasons for this, and most importantly, fog computing did not present a clear business case for the companies and participating individuals yet. This paper summarizes the technical, non-functional and economic challenges, which have been posing hurdles in adopting fog computing, by consolidating them across different clusters. The paper also summarizes the relevant academic and industrial contributions in addressing these challenges and provides future research directions in realizing real-time fog computing applications, also considering the emerging trends such as federated learning and quantum computing.Comment: Accepted for publication at Wiley Software: Practice and Experience journa

Resources management architecture and algorithms for virtualized IVR applications in cloud environment

Interactive Voice Response (IVR) applications are ubiquitous nowadays. IVR is a telephony technology that allows interactions with a wide range of automated information systems via a telephone keypad or voice commands. Cloud computing is a newly emerging paradigm that hosts and provides services over the Internet with many inherent benefits. It has three major service models: Infrastructure as a service (IaaS), Platform as a service (PaaS), and Software as a Service (SaaS). Cloud computing is based on the virtualization technology that enables the co-existence of entities in general on the same substrates. These entities may be operating systems co-existing on the same hardware, applications co-existing on the same operating system, or even full-blown networks co-existing on the same routers. The key benefit is efficiency through the sharing of physical resources. Several multimedia applications are provided in cloud environments nowadays. However, to the best of our knowledge, there is no architecture that creates and manages IVR applications in cloud environment. Therefore, we propose to develop a new virtualized architecture that can create, deploy and manage IVR applications in cloud environment. We also propose two new algorithms for resources management and task scheduling as an essential part of resource sharing in such environment

Metaverse: A Vision, Architectural Elements, and Future Directions for Scalable and Realtime Virtual Worlds

With the emergence of Cloud computing, Internet of Things-enabled Human-Computer Interfaces, Generative Artificial Intelligence, and high-accurate Machine and Deep-learning recognition and predictive models, along with the Post Covid-19 proliferation of social networking, and remote communications, the Metaverse gained a lot of popularity. Metaverse has the prospective to extend the physical world using virtual and augmented reality so the users can interact seamlessly with the real and virtual worlds using avatars and holograms. It has the potential to impact people in the way they interact on social media, collaborate in their work, perform marketing and business, teach, learn, and even access personalized healthcare. Several works in the literature examine Metaverse in terms of hardware wearable devices, and virtual reality gaming applications. However, the requirements of realizing the Metaverse in realtime and at a large-scale need yet to be examined for the technology to be usable. To address this limitation, this paper presents the temporal evolution of Metaverse definitions and captures its evolving requirements. Consequently, we provide insights into Metaverse requirements. In addition to enabling technologies, we lay out architectural elements for scalable, reliable, and efficient Metaverse systems, and a classification of existing Metaverse applications along with proposing required future research directions

Business process improvement by means of Big Data based Decision Support Systems: a case study on Call Centers

Big Data is a rapidly evolving and maturing field which places significant data storage and processing power at our disposal. To take advantage of this power, we need to create new means of collecting and processing large volumes of data at high speed. Meanwhile, as companies and organizations, such as health services, realize the importance and value of joined-up thinking across supply chains and healthcare pathways, for example, this creates a demand for a new type of approach to Business Activity Monitoring and Management. This new approach requires Big Data solutions to cope with the volume and speed of transactions across global supply chains. In this paper we describe a methodology and framework to leverage Big Data and Analytics to deliver a Decision Support framework to support Business Process Improvement, using near real-time process analytics in a decision-support environment. The system supports the capture and analysis of hierarchical process data, allowing analysis to take place at different organizational and process levels. Individual business units can perform their own process monitoring. An event-correlation mechanism is built into the system, allowing the monitoring of individual process instances or paths

Cloud computing adoption in regional councils

Cloud computing is becoming increasingly important in information technology as an enabler for improved productivity, efficiency and cost reduction; and is expected to offer benefits for public sector organisations. Cloud computing has the potential to improve the reliability and scalability of information technology systems, which allows organisations such as regional municipal governments to focus more on their core business and strategy. Research about the use of cloud computing in the public sector in general is limited. There is a lack of exploratory studies that provide an in-depth and holistic investigation of the factors perceived to influence the adoption of cloud computing. There are no empirical studies about the factors that are perceived to influence the adoption of cloud computing in reference to Australia. This research aimed at exploring perceptions of the potential for value creation from cloud computing in regional councils, to identify factors that are likely to influence adoption of cloud computing including factors that need to be considered when planning to adopt cloud, anticipated benefits of cloud adoption, and challenges and issues that faced cloud adoption. This research aimed to improve understandings related to the factors that influence cloud computing adoption decision making in regional municipal governments. The research employed a mixed method approach (qualitative and quantitative). In-depth interviews of Australian councils’ IT managers were conducted with the aim of providing insights into the factors that are perceived likely to influence adoption of cloud computing including factors that need to be considered when planning to adopt cloud, anticipated benefits of cloud adoption, and challenges and issues that faced cloud adoption. Survey data from 480 IT staff across 47 local government councils were collected to confirm the findings of the exploratory stage. The factors that were examined included: compatibility, complexity, cost, security concern, top management support, organisation size, government regulation, and information intensity. The findings of this research are expected to assist in making investment decisions on cloud computing adoption

Elektronický systém pro podporu provádění klinických studií s možností zpracování dat pomocí umělé inteligence

An increasing amount of data are collected through wearable devices during ambulatory, and long-term monitoring of biological signals, adoption of persuasive technology and dynamics of clinical trials information sharing - all of that changes the possible clinical intervention. Moreover, more and more smartphone apps are hitting the market as they become a tool in daily life for many people around the globe. All of these applications are generating a tremendous amount of data, that is difficult to process using traditional methods, and asks for engagement of advanced methods of data processing. For recruiting patients, this calls for a shift from traditional methods of engaging patients to modern communication platforms such as social media, that are providing easy access to up- to-date information on an everyday basis. These factors make the clinical study progression demanding, in terms of unified participant management and processing of connected digital resources. Some clinical trials put a strong accent on remote sensing data and patient engagement through their smartphones. To facilitate this, a direct participant messaging, where the researchers give support, guidance and troubleshooting on a personal level using already adopted communication channels, needs to be implemented. Since the...Objem dat, který je generován nositelnými zařízeními v průběhu ambulatorního i dlouhodobého snímání biologických signálů, adopce pervazivních technologií a dynamika předávání informací v rámci klinických studií - to vše mění způsoby, kterým mohou prováděny klinické studie. Více a více aplikací, které přicházejí na trh se stávají pomůckou v denním životě lidí po celém světě. Všechny tyto aplikace produkují obrovské množství dat, jež je obtížné zpracovat tradičními metodami, a vyvstává tak nutnost využití pokročilých metod. Je také možné sledovat odvrat od tradičních metod náboru pacientů, k moderním komunikačním platformám jako sociální sítě, které usnadňují přístup k aktuálním informacím. Tyto faktory činí postup v klinické studii náročným s ohledem na management účastníků studie a zpracování informací ze zdrojů dat. Některé klinické studie kladou velký důraz na sběr dat ze senzorů a zapojení pacientů do studie prostřednictvím jejich mobilních telefonů. Pro usnadnění tohoto přístupu, je nutné využít přímou komunikací s pacientem, kdy administrátoři studie poskytují podporu a pomáhají řešit problémy, které se mohou v průběhu studie vyskytnout, a to za pomocí moderních komunikačních platforem a elektronických zpráv vedených přímo s účastníkem studie. Celý tento postup je nicméně časově náročný, a je...Centre for Practical Applications Support and Spin-off Companies of the 1st Faculty of Medicine Charles UniversityCentrum podpory aplikačních výstupů a spin-off firem 1. LF UK1. lékařská fakultaFirst Faculty of Medicin

Secure Abstractions for Trusted Cloud Computation

Cloud computing is adopted by most organizations due to its characteristics, namely offering on-demand resources and services that can quickly be provisioned with minimal management effort and maintenance expenses for its users. However it still suffers from security incidents which have lead to many data security concerns and reluctance in further adherence. With the advent of these incidents, cryptographic technologies such as homomorphic and searchable encryption schemes were leveraged to provide solutions that mitigated data security concerns. The goal of this thesis is to provide a set of secure abstractions to serve as a tool for programmers to develop their own distributed applications. Furthermore, these abstractions can also be used to support trusted cloud computations in the context of NoSQL data stores. For this purpose we leveraged conflict-free replicated data types (CRDTs) as they provide a mechanism to ensure data consistency when replicated that has no need for synchronization, which aligns well with the distributed and replicated nature of the cloud, and the aforementioned cryptographic technologies to comply with the security requirements. The main challenge of this thesis consisted in combining the cryptographic technologies with the CRDTs in such way that it was possible to support all of the data structures functionalities over ciphertext while striving to attain the best security and performance possible. To evaluate our abstractions we conducted an experiment to compare each secure abstraction with their non secure counterpart performance wise. Additionally, we also analysed the security level provided by each of the structures in light of the cryptographic scheme used to support it. The results of our experiment shows that our abstractions provide the intended data security with an acceptable performance overhead, showing that it has potential to be used to build solutions for trusted cloud computation

Towards Tactile Internet in Beyond 5G Era: Recent Advances, Current Issues and Future Directions

Tactile Internet (TI) is envisioned to create a paradigm shift from the content-oriented communications to steer/control-based communications by enabling real-time transmission of haptic information (i.e., touch, actuation, motion, vibration, surface texture) over Internet in addition to the conventional audiovisual and data traffics. This emerging TI technology, also considered as the next evolution phase of Internet of Things (IoT), is expected to create numerous opportunities for technology markets in a wide variety of applications ranging from teleoperation systems and Augmented/Virtual Reality (AR/VR) to automotive safety and eHealthcare towards addressing the complex problems of human society. However, the realization of TI over wireless media in the upcoming Fifth Generation (5G) and beyond networks creates various non-conventional communication challenges and stringent requirements in terms of ultra-low latency, ultra-high reliability, high data-rate connectivity, resource allocation, multiple access and quality-latency-rate tradeoff. To this end, this paper aims to provide a holistic view on wireless TI along with a thorough review of the existing state-of-the-art, to identify and analyze the involved technical issues, to highlight potential solutions and to propose future research directions. First, starting with the vision of TI and recent advances and a review of related survey/overview articles, we present a generalized framework for wireless TI in the Beyond 5G Era including a TI architecture, the main technical requirements, the key application areas and potential enabling technologies. Subsequently, we provide a comprehensive review of the existing TI works by broadly categorizing them into three main paradigms; namely, haptic communications, wireless AR/VR, and autonomous, intelligent and cooperative mobility systems. Next, potential enabling technologies across physical/Medium Access Control (MAC) and network layers are identified and discussed in detail. Also, security and privacy issues of TI applications are discussed along with some promising enablers. Finally, we present some open research challenges and recommend promising future research directions