A Cloud Service for COTS component-based Architectures

The management of software architectures is an important subject, especially in component-based web user interfaces to enhance their accessibility, dynamism and management at run-time. The Cloud offers some favorable mechanisms for this kind of systems, since it allows us to manage the software remotely, guarantees high availability of the resources and enables us to perform mass storage. This article presents an infrastructure solution, based on the use of web services and cloud computing, for managing COTS-based architectures

Can open-source projects (re-) shape the SDN/NFV-driven telecommunication market?

Telecom network operators face rapidly changing business needs. Due to their dependence on long product cycles they lack the ability to quickly respond to changing user demands. To spur innovation and stay competitive, network operators are investigating technological solutions with a proven track record in other application domains such as open source software projects. Open source software enables parties to learn, use, or contribute to technology from which they were previously excluded. OSS has reshaped many application areas including the landscape of operating systems and consumer software. The paradigmshift in telecommunication systems towards Software-Defined Networking introduces possibilities to benefit from open source projects. Implementing the control part of networks in software enables speedier adaption and innovation, and less dependencies on legacy protocols or algorithms hard-coded in the control part of network devices. The recently proposed concept of Network Function Virtualization pushes the softwarization of telecommunication functionalities even further down to the data plane. Within the NFV paradigm, functionality which was previously reserved for dedicated hardware implementations can now be implemented in software and deployed on generic Commercial Off-The Shelf (COTS) hardware. This paper provides an overview of existing open source initiatives for SDN/NFV-based network architectures, involving infrastructure to orchestration-related functionality. It situates them in a business process context and identifies the pros and cons for the market in general, as well as for individual actors

Emulating Home Automation Installations through Component-based Web Technology

The Internet of Things mechanisms enable the management of home environments since they can be developed as IoT based information systems. From standard smart homes to automated buildings, including other kind of domotics and inmotics solutions, every system must be tested and validated before its installation. The current tools offered by IoT and home automation vendors lack in emulation features close to the real behavior of the devices. In many cases, delaying the verification actions until the hardware is acquired and installed may cause some drawbacks, for example, from the economic point of view. This paper presents a solution for emulating home automation environments which are based on the KNX standard and can be represented by architectures of devices. The emulation consist of developing virtual implementations of real devices which operate and communicate through web technology. The technology implementing these virtual devices allows us to develop components which can provide different type of data related to the installation (audio, video, text, animations, images, etc.). The architectures can be managed using web services and their behavior can be tested through web user interfaces showing the mentioned data. Furthermore, virtual and physical devices are connected to validate the interoperability between the real installation and the emulation