SensorCloud: Towards the Interdisciplinary Development of a Trustworthy Platform for Globally Interconnected Sensors and Actuators

Although Cloud Computing promises to lower IT costs and increase users' productivity in everyday life, the unattractive aspect of this new technology is that the user no longer owns all the devices which process personal data. To lower scepticism, the project SensorCloud investigates techniques to understand and compensate these adoption barriers in a scenario consisting of cloud applications that utilize sensors and actuators placed in private places. This work provides an interdisciplinary overview of the social and technical core research challenges for the trustworthy integration of sensor and actuator devices with the Cloud Computing paradigm. Most importantly, these challenges include i) ease of development, ii) security and privacy, and iii) social dimensions of a cloud-based system which integrates into private life. When these challenges are tackled in the development of future cloud systems, the attractiveness of new use cases in a sensor-enabled world will considerably be increased for users who currently do not trust the Cloud.Comment: 14 pages, 3 figures, published as technical report of the Department of Computer Science of RWTH Aachen Universit

Review of the environmental and organisational implications of cloud computing: final report.

Cloud computing – where elastic computing resources are delivered over the Internet by external service providers – is generating significant interest within HE and FE. In the cloud computing business model, organisations or individuals contract with a cloud computing service provider on a pay-per-use basis to access data centres, application software or web services from any location. This provides an elasticity of provision which the customer can scale up or down to meet demand. This form of utility computing potentially opens up a new paradigm in the provision of IT to support administrative and educational functions within HE and FE. Further, the economies of scale and increasingly energy efficient data centre technologies which underpin cloud services means that cloud solutions may also have a positive impact on carbon footprints. In response to the growing interest in cloud computing within UK HE and FE, JISC commissioned the University of Strathclyde to undertake a Review of the Environmental and Organisational Implications of Cloud Computing in Higher and Further Education [19]

Infrastructure-as-a-Service Usage Determinants in Enterprises

The thesis focuses on the research question, what the determinants of Infrastructure-as-a-Service usage of enterprises are. A wide range of IaaS determinants is collected for an IaaS adoption model of enterprises, which is evaluated in a Web survey. As the economical determinants are especially important, they are separately investigated using a cost-optimizing decision support model. This decision support model is then applied to a potential IaaS use case of a large automobile manufacturer

Cloud Manufacturing Model to Optimise Manufacturing Performance

Being predicted as the future of modern manufacturing, cloud-based manufacturing has drawn the attention of researchers in academia and industry. Researches are being done towards transforming every service in to cloud based service-oriented manufacturing mode in the manufacturing industry. There are many challenges that would arise when travelling towards this paradigm shift which is being addressed by researchers, but there are very few researches that concentrate on the elastic capability of cloud. Elastic capability makes this paradigm unique from all the other approaches or technologies. If elasticity is not achievable then the necessity of migrating to cloud is unnecessary. So, it is imperative to identify if at all it is necessary to adopt cloud-based manufacturing mode and discuss the issues and challenges that would arise to achieve elasticity when shifting to this emerging manufacturing paradigm. This research explores the importance of adopting cloud-based manufacturing mode to improve manufacturing performance based on the competitive priorities such as cost, quality, delivery and flexibility and proposes an elasticity assessment tool to be included in the cloud-based manufacturing model for the users to assess the challenges and issues on the realisation of elasticity on the context of manufacturing, which is the novelty of this research. The contribution to knowledge is a clear understanding of the necessity of cloud based elastic manufacturing model in the manufacturing environment for the manufacturing SMEs to gain a competitive advantage by achieving the competitive priorities such as low-cost, high-quality, and on-time delivery. Finally, the research suggests the best combination of manufacturing parameters that has to be emphasised to improve the manufacturing performance and gain a competitive advantage

A native enhanced elastic extension tables multi-tenant database

A fundamental factor of digital image compression is the conversion processes. The intention of this process is to understand the shape of an image and to modify the digital image to a grayscale configuration where the encoding of the compression technique is operational. This article focuses on an investigation of compression algorithms for images with artistic effects. A key component in image compression is how to effectively preserve the original quality of images. Image compression is to condense by lessening the redundant data of images in order that they are transformed cost-effectively. The common techniques include discrete cosine transform (DCT), fast Fourier transform (FFT), and shifted FFT (SFFT). Experimental results point out compression ratio between original RGB images and grayscale images, as well as comparison. The superior algorithm improving a shape comprehension for images with grahic effect is SFFT technique

How can startups make use of cloud services

The purpose of this project is to discuss the technical obstacles that small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) face, as well as how cloud computing can help to solve these issues. Cloud computing has the ability to radically change competitive environments by offering a new forum for generating and delivering business value and market development. Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) also lack sufficient technological capital. They could either buy expensive software customized by large companies or develop their own low-cost applications with limited functionality. The research questions answered in this project are as follows: 1. How can a startup build a cost-effective website and host it on a cloud platform? 2. How can a startup make a website always available? 3. How can a startup resolve the low latency problem using cloud services? 4. How can a startup make use of different cloud services to reduce the use of infrastructure and technology resources. The methodology used for this project is to understand what is cloud computing, cloud implementation models, cloud computing services, and their benefits. The Implementation Solution is offered by evaluating various cloud vendors such as AWS and Microsoft Azure and the various services they provide. This study provides a realistic demonstration of designing and hosting a website in AWS and Microsoft Azure to support this approach. This study offers insights and suggestions to SMEs for implementing various cloud services to achieve economies of scale. The project concluded that cloud computing is simple to use, inexpensive, eliminates the need for physical office space, and eliminates the need to transport storage devices. Because of its scalability and faster content delivery, as well as various business models, the cloud is an excellent choice for startups

An enterprise architecture driven approach to virtualisation

Organisations have shown a significant interest in the adoption of virtualisation technology for improving the efficiency of their Data Centres (DC) from both the resource performance and cost efficiency viewpoints. By improving the efficiency of data centres we can sustainably manage their impact on the environment by controlling their energy consumption. The intentions are clear but how best to approach to Data Centre virtualisation is not. This paper proposes an integrated Enterprise Architecture and Information Infrastructure (EAII) driven approach to guide the Data Centre virtualisation. The EAII approach has been developed based on the review and analysis of wellknown The Open Group Architecture Framework (TOGAF) and Information Infrastructure (II) model. The proposed integrated EAII approach seems appropriate to guide and align business strategy and virtualisation implementation for data centres of any size in any industry vertical