Optimal Contracts for Outsourced Computation

While expensive cryptographically verifiable computation aims at defeating malicious agents, many civil purposes of outsourced computation tolerate a weaker notion of security, i.e., “lazy-but-honest” contractors. Targeting this type of agents, we develop optimal contracts for outsourcing of computational tasks via appropriate use of rewards, punishments, auditing rate, and “redundancy”. Our contracts provably minimize the expense of the outsourcer (principal) while guaranteeing correct computation. Furthermore, we incorporate practical restrictions of the maximum enforceable fine, limited and/or costly auditing, and bounded budget of the outsourcer. By examining the optimal contracts, we provide insights on how resources should be utilized when auditing capacity and enforceability are limited. Finally, we present a light-weight cryptographic implementation of the contracts and discuss a comparison across different implementations of auditing in outsourced computation

Vendor Firm Characteristics and Buyers\u27 Perceptions of Transaction Costs and Relationship Governance

The utilization of outsourced business services continues to grow as organizations focus on core competencies. Outsourced services span the gamut from financial services to information processing to engagement of third party logistic services by enterprise customers. When outsourcing business services, organizational buyers often have to select from a plethora of small, mid-sized, and large vendors that offer competing services at comparable prices. Given this choice conundrum, what factors influence buyers’ perceptions of vendors and their capacity to deliver expected value? The current research integrates three distinct, yet related, theoretical streams including transaction cost, vendor selection, and buyer-seller relational exchange in studying how vendor firm attributes affect buyers’ perceptions of the vendor as well as their willingness-to-engage in a particular type of relationship exchange with the vendor. Two separate, but conceptually-related essays are offered to add some clarity to variables influencing vendor assessment and selection. Essay 1 introduces vendor firm attributes as antecedents to the opportunism and uncertainty constructs thereby extending the transaction cost research. Specifically, Essay 1 examines how vendor firm size and reputation influence organizational buyers’ a priori perceptions of vendor opportunism and uncertainty. Essay 2 examines the influence of buyers’ opportunism and uncertainty perceptions on their relationship governance choices. Concomitantly, Essay 2 studies how opportunism and uncertainty perceptions on the part of the buyer mediate the relationship between vendor firm characteristics and buyers’ willingness-to-engage in contractual and relational exchange/governance with a given vendor. A panel of IT buyers, across various industries, was surveyed to determine the impact of vendor attributes on buyers’ perceptions of opportunism and technological uncertainty associated with the vendor. In addition, the survey also tested the relationship between buyers’ perceptions of vendor opportunism and uncertainty and their willingness-to-engage in legal contracts/bonds and relational exchange with the vendor. Results support the linkages between vendor firm reputation and buyers’ perceptions of opportunism and technological uncertainty. Moreover, a direct linkage was found between vendor firm reputation and buyers’ relationship preferences. Implications are discussed along with limitations and areas of future research

Betrayal, Distrust, and Rationality: Smart Counter-Collusion Contracts for Verifiable Cloud Computing

Cloud computing has become an irreversible trend. Together comes the pressing need for verifiability, to assure the client the correctness of computation outsourced to the cloud. Existing verifiable computation techniques all have a high overhead, thus if being deployed in the clouds, would render cloud computing more expensive than the on-premises counterpart. To achieve verifiability at a reasonable cost, we leverage game theory and propose a smart contract based solution. In a nutshell, a client lets two clouds compute the same task, and uses smart contracts to stimulate tension, betrayal and distrust between the clouds, so that rational clouds will not collude and cheat. In the absence of collusion, verification of correctness can be done easily by crosschecking the results from the two clouds. We provide a formal analysis of the games induced by the contracts, and prove that the contracts will be effective under certain reasonable assumptions. By resorting to game theory and smart contracts, we are able to avoid heavy cryptographic protocols. The client only needs to pay two clouds to compute in the clear, and a small transaction fee to use the smart contracts. We also conducted a feasibility study that involves implementing the contracts in Solidity and running them on the official Ethereum network.Comment: Published in ACM CCS 2017, this is the full version with all appendice

Management outsourcing business models: a perspective of sustainability

In a world characterized by intense competition, outsourcing has infiltrated the management world in a major way. Outsourcing services are becoming an increasingly important source to companies focus on their core competencies, reduce costs, and increase efficiency in several organizational functions. Even though outsourcing of business activities has become a prevalent practice amongst organizations, the literature provides only a one-dimensional view of the phenomenon by focusing on the service receivers’ perspectives – buyer. This dissertation overcomes this weakness by investigate and analyze the business models of outsourcing companies – vendor - as a way to understand how they reach a sustainable competitive advantage that differentiates them in a competitive market. Hence, the whole investigation explores the service provider’s perspectives by conducting interviews to 16 top executives from 15 different outsourcing companies in Portugal. The findings suggest that all the organizations presented in the study face the same challenges/pains in the market and each of them manifest an exclusive combination of mechanisms, methods, strategies and approaches within their business models to be differentiated in the market and sustainable in terms of efficiency and competitive advantage.Num mundo caracterizado por forte competição, o outsourcing tem estado presente no mundo da gestão de forma cada vez mais significativa. Serviços de outsourcing representam atualmente uma importante fonte para as empresas se conseguirem focar nas suas competências e capacidades chave, reduzir custos, e aumentar a eficiência em diversas funções organizacionais. Apesar do outsourcing de atividades de negócio ser uma prática cada vez mais relevante e existente nas organizações, a literatura proporciona apenas uma visão dimensional do fenómeno, focando-se na perspetiva dos recetores do serviço – buyer. Esta dissertação transpõe este gap investigando e analisando os modelos de negócio das empresas de outsourcing – vendor – de forma a perceber como estas alcançam uma vantagem competitiva que as torna diferenciadoras num mercado competitivo. Assim, a presente investigação explora a perspetiva dos prestadores do serviço de outsourcing através da realização de entrevistas a 16 executivos de topo pertencentes a 15 distintas empresas de outsourcing em Portugal. Os resultados demonstram que as organizações presentes no estudo enfrentam os mesmos desafios e dores no mercado, e cada uma delas expressa uma combinação exclusiva de mecanismos, métodos, estratégias, e abordagens nos seus modelos de negócio que as torna diferenciadores e sustentáveis no mercado, em termos de eficiência e vantagem competitiva

A Survey on Data Security in Cloud Computing Using Blockchain: Challenges, Existing-State-Of-The-Art Methods, And Future Directions

Cloud computing is one of the ruling storage solutions. However, the cloud computing centralized storage method is not stable. Blockchain, on the other hand, is a decentralized cloud storage system that ensures data security. Cloud environments are vulnerable to several attacks which compromise the basic confidentiality, integrity, availability, and security of the network. This research focus on decentralized, safe data storage, high data availability, and effective use of storage resources. To properly respond to the situation of the blockchain method, we have conducted a comprehensive survey of the most recent and promising blockchain state-of-the-art methods, the P2P network for data dissemination, hash functions for data authentication, and IPFS (InterPlanetary File System) protocol for data integrity. Furthermore, we have discussed a detailed comparison of consensus algorithms of Blockchain concerning security. Also, we have discussed the future of blockchain and cloud computing. The major focus of this study is to secure the data in Cloud computing using blockchain and ease for researchers for further research work

Network e-Volution

Modern society is a network society permeated by information technology (IT). As a result of innovations in IT, enormous amounts of information can be communicated to a larger number of recipients faster than ever before. The evolution of networks is heavily influenced by the extensive use of IT, which has enabled co-evolving advanced quantitative and qualitative forms of networking. Although several networks have been formed with the aim to reduce or deal with uncertainty through faster and broader access to information, it is in fact IT that has created new kinds of uncertainty. For instance, although digital information integration in supply chains has made production planning more robust, it has at the same time intensified mutual dependencies, thereby actually increasing the level of uncertainty. The aim of this working paper is to investigate the aspects of evolving networks and uncertainty in networks at the cutting edges of different types of networks and from the perspective of different layers defining these networks

Inter-organizational collaboration in software product development

Digitalization changes many industries since manufacturers are increasing the automation level in their products. Novel business needs require developed softwares, and that often leads companies to use external skills in software development either by hiring more software engineers or by purchasing tailored softwares from software companies. However, prices in the software industry can be high, and hiring new software engineers or purchasing tailored softwares may not be the most cost-effective method to get softwares into products. Co-developing softwares with other companies could be a potential method for sharing the costs and benefits of the product development processes. The objective of this thesis was to investigate different companies’ interests towards deep collaboration models, such as contractual alliances and joint ventures, in software development. Other objective was to examine what benefits and risks these collaboration models include, as well as which are the enablers and barriers for such collaboration. Research data was gathered by interviews with product development managers and directors as well as with technology managers and directors of different companies. Results showed that software co-development in a contractual alliance aroused moderate interest, whereas forming a joint venture for software co-development aroused less interest among the interviewees. Main benefits that interviewees saw in a deep collaboration in product development were the possibility to increase the speed and creativity in the processes while sharing the costs and risks of the development work. The main risks in deep collaboration were the uncertainty in collaboration costs, risk of getting too dependent of the partner and risk of getting unfair share of the jointly created value. Trust, open knowledge sharing and sufficient contracting skills were seen as the main enablers for deep collaboration, whereas limited time and complex contracting were the main barriers for deep inter-organizational collaboration