A Secure and Fair Resource Sharing Model for Community Clouds

Cloud computing has gained a lot of importance and has been one of the most discussed segment of today\u27s IT industry. As enterprises explore the idea of using clouds, concerns have emerged related to cloud security and standardization. This thesis explores whether the Community Cloud Deployment Model can provide solutions to some of the concerns associated with cloud computing. A secure framework based on trust negotiations for resource sharing within the community is developed as a means to provide standardization and security while building trust during resource sharing within the community. Additionally, a model for fair sharing of resources is developed which makes the resource availability and usage transparent to the community so that members can make informed decisions about their own resource requirements based on the resource usage and availability within the community. Furthermore, the fair-share model discusses methods that can be employed to address situations when the demand for a resource is higher than the resource availability in the resource pool. Various methods that include reduction in the requested amount of resource, early release of the resources and taxing members have been studied, Based on comparisons of these methods along with the advantages and disadvantages of each model outlined, a hybrid method that only taxes members for unused resources is developed. All these methods have been studied through simulations

Cloud terminals for ticketing systems

In this research work, we introduce the concept of a thin device implemented on a cloud platform for terminal devices on the front end of ticketing systems. Therefore, we propose the evolution of the traditional architecture of ticketing for a cloud based architecture in which the core processes of ticketing are offered through a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) business model, which can be subscribed by transport operators that pay-per-use. Ticketing terminal devices (e.g., gates, validators, vending machines) are integrated in the cloud environment creating the concept for a ‘thin’ device. This approach is achieved by moving business logic from terminals to the cloud. Each terminal is registered to be managed by each own operator, configuring a multi-tenancy implementation which is vendor hardware independent, allowing to address elasticity and interoperability issues. The elasticity of the cloud will support the expansion/implosion of small (transport) operators business around electronic ticketing. In the near future, this ticketing solution will promote collaboration between operators

Taas – ticketing as a service

The goal of this research work is to introduce the concept of a lower cost flexible system for ticketing purposes implemented on a cloud platform. We propose therefore the evolution of the traditional architecture of ticketing for a cloud based architecture in which the core processes of ticketing are offered through a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) business model, which can be subscribed by operators that pay-per-use. Ticketing terminal equipment (e.g. gates, validators, vending machines) are integrated in the cloud environment. This approach is achieved by moving business logic from terminals to the cloud. Each terminal is registered to be managed by each own operator, configuring a multi-tenant implementation which is vendor hardware independent, allowing to address elasticity and interoperability issues. The elasticity of the cloud will support the expansion/implosion of small (transport) operators business around electronic ticketing. In the near future, this ticketing solution will promote collaboration between transport operators

Organisational Transformation as a Consequence of Software-as-a-Service Usage by Small and Medium Enterprises

Cloud computing, and particularly Software-as-a-Service, is now in widespread use, but how organisations are potentially transformed by Software-as-a-Service usage needs greater understanding. How do organisations, particularly Small and Medium Enterprises, change their processes and structures after a period of time of using Software-as-a-Service solutions? This study used a qualitative method of investigation. Sixteen semi-structured interviews have been conducted with participants from eleven different organisations. It was found that all the organisations experienced transformation to some extent. The types of organisational transformation observed included changes to organisational processes, changes to the structures within the organisations and also changes to the role played by IT departments. Relationships between these forms of transformation were also found. A greater understanding of these transformations can help organisations gain greater benefits from Software-as-a-Service solutions

Software Project Services using Infrastructure-as-Code

Infrastructure-as-code is a modern practice for IT automation as well as managing complex and large-scale infrastructure. It allows describing infrastructure and configuration in a code-like syntax easily understandable for any software developer. Unlike manual infrastructure configurations the infrastructure code can be versioned, tested, reviewed, and even compiled resulting in the actual desired systems infrastructure and configuration. The objective of this thesis is to create a new software project establishment process for a medium sized software company. The aim is to automate and streamline a beginning phase of new projects by creating and documenting a process of establishing basic software project services by using infrastructure-as-code. A desired feature of the new process is to partly delegate the work of IT department to project teams who are most aware of the tools and services required for each project. The thesis is divided into two parts. The first part presents relevant infrastructure-as-code and DevOps software development methodology related theory in a form of a literature review and the second part describes planning and implementing required infrastructure-as-code automations and the actual service establishment process for the case company. The outcome of the study was a new automated project establishment process, in a form of two artifacts: process documentation and required infrastructure-as-code scripts. The study also produced a recommended way for handling the scripts and configuration files during the process, along with multiple other recommendations for similar implementations and for usage of infrastructure-as-code in general. Furthermore, results also included some recommendations for software manufacturers and a brief overview of infrastructure-as-code related risks. Infrastructure-as-code was found to be a powerful enabler of automation and suitable also for workflow automation. However, creating infrastructure-as-code scripts and building a suitable development environment were found to be difficult. Also, several target system related challenges were identified during the implementation. The conclusion considering the service establishment process was that it is feasible to delegate only configuring the infrastructure-as-code implementation to the end users.Infrastruktuuri koodina on moderni IT automaation sekä monimutkaisten ja suurten infrastruktuurien hallinnan käytäntö. Se mahdollistaa infrastruktuurin ja konfiguraation määrittelyn käyttäen ohjelmakoodia muistuttavaa syntaksia, joka on kenen tahansa ohjelmistokehittäjän ymmärrettävissä. Toisin kuin manuaaliset konfiguraatiot, infrastruktuurikoodi voidaan versioida, testata, katselmoida ja jopa kääntää, jolloin lopputuloksena saadaan luotua ja konfiguroitua määrityksen mukainen järjestelmäinfrastruktuuri. Tämän opinnäytetyön tavoitteena on luoda uusi ohjelmistoprojektien tarvitsemien palveluiden perustamisprosessi toimeksiantajayritykselle. Tavoitteena on automatisoida ja virtaviivaistaa uusien projektien aloittamista luomalla ja dokumentoimalla uusi tavanomaisten ohjelmistoprojektipalveluiden perustamisprosessi, joka hyödyntää infrastruktuuri koodina -lähestymistapaa. Yksi uuden prosessin toivotuista ominaisuuksista on siirtää tietohallinnon työkuormaa osittain projektitiimeille, joilla on paras käsitys kunkin projektin vaatimista työkaluista ja palveluista. Opinnäytetyö jakautuu kahteen osaan, joista ensimmäinen esittelee infrastruktuuri koodina lähestymistapaan ja DevOps-ohjelmistokehitysmetodologiaan liittyvää teoriaa kirjallisuuskatsauksen muodossa. Toinen osa kuvaa uuden prosessin sekä siihen kuuluvien infrastruktuurikoodien suunnittelua ja toteutusta kohdeyrityksen toimeksiannosta. Tutkimuksen lopputuloksena luotiin uusi automatisoitu projektipalveluiden perustamisprosessi, joka muodostui kahdesta artefaktista: prosessidokumentaatiosta ja vaadittavista infrastruktuuri koodina -skripteistä. Tutkimus tuotti myös suositeltavan tavan skriptien ja konfiguraatiotiedostojen hallintaan prosessin aikana sekä useita suosituksia vastaavanlaisten implementaatioiden luomiseen tulevaisuudessa ja infrastruktuuri koodina -työkalujen käyttöön yleisesti. Tulokset sisälsivät myös suosituksia ohjelmistovalmistajille sekä lyhyen katsauksen infrastruktuuri koodina -lähestymistapaan liittyvistä riskeistä. Infrastruktuuri koodina todettiin tehokkaaksi automaation mahdollistajaksi ja sopivaksi myös työnkulkujen automatisoimiseen. Toisaalta skriptien kirjoittaminen ja tarvittavan kehitysympäristön rakentaminen havaittiin haasteellisiksi tehtäviksi. Tutkimuksen edetessä havaittiin myös useita kohdejärjestelmiin liittyviä haasteita. Johtopäätös palveluiden perustamisprosessin kannalta oli, että loppukäyttäjille on järkevää ja mahdollista delegoida ainoastaan skriptien tarvitseman konfiguraation tuottaminen

The Enigma of Digitized Property A Tribute to John Perry Barlow

Compressive Sensing has attracted a lot of attention over the last decade within the areas of applied mathematics, computer science and electrical engineering because of it suggesting that we can sample a signal under the limit that traditional sampling theory provides. By then using dierent recovery algorithms we are able to, theoretically, recover the complete original signal even though we have taken very few samples to begin with. It has been proven that these recovery algorithms work best on signals that are highly compressible, meaning that the signals can have a sparse representation where the majority of the signal elements are close to zero. In this thesis we implement some of these recovery algorithms and investigate how these perform practically on a real video signal consisting of 300 sequential image frames. The video signal will be under sampled, using compressive sensing, and then recovered using two types of strategies, - One where no time correlation between successive frames is assumed, using the classical greedy algorithm Orthogonal Matching Pursuit (OMP) and a more robust, modied OMP called Predictive Orthogonal Matching Pursuit (PrOMP). - One newly developed algorithm, Dynamic Iterative Pursuit (DIP), which assumes and utilizes time correlation between successive frames. We then performance evaluate and compare these two strategies using the Peak Signal to Noise Ratio (PSNR) as a metric. We also provide visual results. Based on investigation of the data in the video signal, using a simple model for the time correlation and transition probabilities between dierent signal coecients in time, the DIP algorithm showed good recovery performance. The main results showed that DIP performed better and better over time and outperformed the PrOMP up to a maximum of 6 dB gain at half of the original sampling rate but performed slightly below the PrOMP in a smaller part of the video sequence where the correlation in time between successive frames in the original video sequence suddenly became weaker.Compressive sensing har blivit mer och mer uppmarksammat under det senaste decenniet inom forskningsomraden sasom tillampad matematik, datavetenskap och elektroteknik. En stor anledning till detta ar att dess teori innebar att det blir mojligt att sampla en signal under gransen som traditionell samplingsteori innebar. Genom att sen anvanda olika aterskapningsalgoritmer ar det anda teoretiskt mojligt att aterskapa den ursprungliga signalen. Det har visats sig att dessaaterskapningsalgoritmer funkar bast pa signaler som ar mycket kompressiva, vilket innebar att dessa signaler kan representeras glest i nagon doman dar merparten av signalens koecienter ar nara 0 i varde. I denna uppsats implementeras vissa av dessaaterskapningsalgoritmer och vi undersoker sedan hur dessa presterar i praktiken pa en riktig videosignal bestaende av 300 sekventiella bilder. Videosignalen kommer att undersamplas med compressive sensing och sen aterskapas genom att anvanda 2 typer av strategier, - En dar ingen tidskorrelation mellan successiva bilder i videosignalen antas genom att anvanda klassiska algoritmer sasom Orthogonal Matching Pursuit (OMP) och en mer robust, modierad OMP : Predictive Orthogonal Matching Pursuit (PrOMP). - En nyligen utvecklad algoritm, Dynamic Iterative Pursuit (DIP), som antar och nyttjar en tidskorrelation mellan successiva bilder i videosignalen. Vi utvarderar och jamfor prestandan i dessa tva olika typer av strategier genom att anvanda Peak Signal to Noise Ratio (PSNR) som jamforelseparameter. Vi ger ocksa visuella resultat fran videosekvensen. Baserat pa undersokning av data i videosignalen visade det sig, genom att anvanda enkla modeller, bade for tidskorrelationen och sannolikhetsfunktioner for vilka koecienter som ar aktiva vid varje tidpunkt, att DIP algoritmen visade battre prestanda an de tva andra tidsoberoende algoritmerna under visa tidsekvenser. Framforallt de sekvenser dar videosignalen inneholl starkare korrelation i tid. Som mest presterade DIP upp till 6 dB battre an OMP och PrOMP

Cloud ConsultingCrowdsourcing-Based Framework for ERP Consulting

Information Technology (IT) altered the way of running businesses in all fields. The installation and integration of an Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system is a critical process. With the emergence of Web 2.0, many businesses were created or reengineered to gain an advantage from this technology. This offers an enormous network of users with different interests and skills, and support knowledge transfer. Our expectation is that ERP consulting business will be the next to be changed. In this work, a cloud consulting framework will be provided to enhance the services offered based on crowdsourcing. After examining literature on crowdsourcing and ERP consulting, the following research question was stated: “How can cloud consulting employ crowdsourcing to improve ERP consultancy?” Thus, the research objective is to develop a cloud consulting framework for ERP consulting based on crowdsourcing