Scottsdale Community College Provides their Students Open Access with End-to-End Virtualization

Due to shrinking budgets and new demands for technology, Scottsdale Community College (SCC) IT department needed an effective, sustainable solution that would provide ubiquitous access to technology for students, faculty, and staff, both on- and off-campus. This paper explores how SCC implemented a complete virtualized computing environment

Cloud Computing: A Qualitative Study and Conceptual Model

“Cloud computing” is the new buzz term in the IT industry. Many practitioners have already adopted the technology or are in the process of adopting it. Yet, there is no methodological research investigating the adoption process. This paper reviews articles and interviews published mostly in practitioner journals to develop a theoretical framework that help us to better understand the cloud computing phenomena. As such, the framework provides a stepping stone for future cloud computing studies

Business Intelligence in the Cloud?

Business Intelligence (BI) deals with integrated approaches to management support. In many cases, the integrated infrastructures that are subject to BI have become complex, costly, and inflexible. A possible remedy for these issues might arise on the horizon with “Cloud Computing” concepts that promise new options for a net based sourcing of hard- and software. Currently, there is still a dearth of concepts for defining, designing, and structuring a possible adaption of Cloud Computing to the domain of BI. This contribution combines results from the outsourcing and the BI literature and derives a framework for delineating “Cloud BI” approaches. This is the bases for the discussion of six possible scenarios – some of which within immediate reach today

Host-Based Virtual Networks Management in Cloud Datacenters

Infrastructure management is of key importance in a wide array of computer and network environments. The use of virtualization in cloud datacenters has driven the communications and computing convergence to a common operational entity. Failure to effectively manage the involved infrastructure results as impediments in provisioning a successful service. Information models facilitate the infrastructure management and current solutions can be effectively applied in most datacenter scenarios, apart from cases where the networking architecture relies heavily on systems virtualization. In this paper we propose an information model for managing virtual network architectures, where hypervisors and computing server resources are deployed as the basis of the networking layer. We provide a successful proof of concept by managing a virtual machine-based network infrastructure acting as an IP routing platform using statistical methods. Our proposal enables a dynamic reconfiguration of allocated infrastructure resources adapting, in real-time, to variations in the imposed workload

Decision Support Tools for Cloud Migration in the Enterprise

This paper describes two tools that aim to support decision making during the migration of IT systems to the cloud. The first is a modeling tool that produces cost estimates of using public IaaS clouds. The tool enables IT architects to model their applications, data and infrastructure requirements in addition to their computational resource usage patterns. The tool can be used to compare the cost of different cloud providers, deployment options and usage scenarios. The second tool is a spreadsheet that outlines the benefits and risks of using IaaS clouds from an enterprise perspective; this tool provides a starting point for risk assessment. Two case studies were used to evaluate the tools. The tools were useful as they informed decision makers about the costs, benefits and risks of using the cloud.Comment: To appear in IEEE CLOUD 201

IT Leaders: Who Are They and Where Do They Come From?

In many firms, Information Technology (IT) leaders assume different titles, the most common ones being Chief Information Officer or Chief Technology Officer. These leaders are usually the highest ranked executives in-charge of the IT governance practices in their firms. The job designations held by these IT leaders have been in existence for the last three decades. The objective of this research is to investigate the hiring trends of IT leaders, as well as their educational backgrounds. Since the findings of this study have the potential to influence the education, training, and hiring of potential IT leaders, these results are beneficial to both educators and practitioners. This exploratory study uses objective firm level longitudinal data spanning a period of 11 years (1997-2007) that includes the pre and post Year 2000 (Y2K), the dot com boom and bust years, and other significant events which have influenced the overall US economy and the IT industry. Using 1299 instances of IT leader hires, the results show that many firms have a top management position in charge of IT. Many of these IT leaders have a technical undergraduate degree and a business graduate degree. The research also reveals that most of these IT leaders did not obtain either their undergraduate or graduate degrees from the top tier schools as classified by the US World News and Report, BusinessWeek or Financial Times

Towards performance evaluation of cloud service providers for cloud data security

© 2016, Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Today's data is sensitive that requires privacy and security both from the cloud service providers (CSP) as well as from users in its all the form of data states: data at rest, while transferring data, enquiring data, and processing the data. Cloud computing has been applied in the health sector, national security services, banking and other business and companies that store confidential data into the cloud as we have seen in recent years. Therefore, information and data security is a crucial issue that needs to be addressed thoroughly in the cloud computing business. This research deals with the performance analysis of recent cloud data security models. This paper proposes cloud data security models based on Business Process Modeling Notations (BPMN) and simulation results can reveal performances issues related to data security as part of any organizations initiative on Business process management (BPM)

Can Information Technology Enhance Governance, Transparency And Accountability In Organisations? A Case Study Of The Campaign For Female Education, Zimbabwe.

The reciprocal action or influence between IT systems, people, processes and government can be of great value to organisations. IT systems have helped evolve new dimensions of governance, procurement, health, commerce and this has made people/organisations more functional and efficient in a rapid manner. The cost of adoption and implementation in governance varies with different governments. This research looks into the ways in which IT systems can enhance transparency, accountability and good governance in organisations seeking excellence. The issues surrounding this are explored through the case study of Camfed Zimbabwe. Outcomes are demonstrated that show it is possible to exercise better governance and transparency through IT

Information quality in Cloud Computing: improvement or deterioration

Abstract The convergence of previous technologies such as Virtualization, Grid computing, Distributed computing, Web Services and Service Oriented Architecture, have come with a good timing contributing to build up Cloud Computing. The services usually found in local data centers are now offered to be delivered from outside of the company, with the possibility of a virtually unlimited quantity of computer resources. But we need to consider how beneficial or unfavorable this new setting is, for issues not completely solved in the past, such as Data Quality. The objective of this study is to form a simplified model that can be used to identify the impact of cloud computing on information quality attribute, being able to measure it, and with this look for improvements in the system quality overall. The results can be useful to people involved in information technology management, data management personnel, system development, project management, and data architecture