A new MDA-SOA based framework for intercloud interoperability

Cloud computing has been one of the most important topics in Information Technology which aims to assure scalable and reliable on-demand services over the Internet. The expansion of the application scope of cloud services would require cooperation between clouds from different providers that have heterogeneous functionalities. This collaboration between different cloud vendors can provide better Quality of Services (QoS) at the lower price. However, current cloud systems have been developed without concerns of seamless cloud interconnection, and actually they do not support intercloud interoperability to enable collaboration between cloud service providers. Hence, the PhD work is motivated to address interoperability issue between cloud providers as a challenging research objective. This thesis proposes a new framework which supports inter-cloud interoperability in a heterogeneous computing resource cloud environment with the goal of dispatching the workload to the most effective clouds available at runtime. Analysing different methodologies that have been applied to resolve various problem scenarios related to interoperability lead us to exploit Model Driven Architecture (MDA) and Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) methods as appropriate approaches for our inter-cloud framework. Moreover, since distributing the operations in a cloud-based environment is a nondeterministic polynomial time (NP-complete) problem, a Genetic Algorithm (GA) based job scheduler proposed as a part of interoperability framework, offering workload migration with the best performance at the least cost. A new Agent Based Simulation (ABS) approach is proposed to model the inter-cloud environment with three types of agents: Cloud Subscriber agent, Cloud Provider agent, and Job agent. The ABS model is proposed to evaluate the proposed framework.Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (FCT) - (Referencia da bolsa: SFRH SFRH / BD / 33965 / 2009) and EC 7th Framework Programme under grant agreement n° FITMAN 604674 (http://www.fitman-fi.eu

Leveraging Cloud Computing and Software-as-a-Service to Build Sustainable and Resilient Supply Chains

Building sustainable and resilient supply chains has emerged as a strategic priority for organizations to improve their environmental, social, and governance performance while deal with unexpected disruptions, such as the COVID-19 pandemic. However, clear guidance for practitioners and analysis of the practices serving both purposes are missing. Leveraging cloud computing benefits, Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) products feature commercial and technical characteristics that help organizations resolve certain sustainable and resilient supply chain challenges by strengthening key capabilities, such as transparency, collaboration, and agility. We apply an affordance lens and a theory-generation case research design to define these challenges and identify how SaaS solutions can respond to them, using empirical qualitative data. We formulate SaaS affordances promoting the concepts of community, standard, update, data, applications, communication, and governance. We determine and illustrate the potential of SaaS solutions for sustainability and resilience for supply chain practitioners and software providers to help them unleash it

Technical Report on Deploying a highly secured OpenStack Cloud Infrastructure using BradStack as a Case Study

Cloud computing has emerged as a popular paradigm and an attractive model for providing a reliable distributed computing model.it is increasing attracting huge attention both in academic research and industrial initiatives. Cloud deployments are paramount for institution and organizations of all scales. The availability of a flexible, free open source cloud platform designed with no propriety software and the ability of its integration with legacy systems and third-party applications are fundamental. Open stack is a free and opensource software released under the terms of Apache license with a fragmented and distributed architecture making it highly flexible. This project was initiated and aimed at designing a secured cloud infrastructure called BradStack, which is built on OpenStack in the Computing Laboratory at the University of Bradford. In this report, we present and discuss the steps required in deploying a secured BradStack Multi-node cloud infrastructure and conducting Penetration testing on OpenStack Services to validate the effectiveness of the security controls on the BradStack platform. This report serves as a practical guideline, focusing on security and practical infrastructure related issues. It also serves as a reference for institutions looking at the possibilities of implementing a secured cloud solution.Comment: 38 pages, 19 figures

Digital Preservation Services : State of the Art Analysis

Research report funded by the DC-NET project.An overview of the state of the art in service provision for digital preservation and curation. Its focus is on the areas where bridging the gaps is needed between e-Infrastructures and efficient and forward-looking digital preservation services. Based on a desktop study and a rapid analysis of some 190 currently available tools and services for digital preservation, the deliverable provides a high-level view on the range of instruments currently on offer to support various functions within a preservation system.European Commission, FP7peer-reviewe

EzWeb/FAST: Reporting on a Successful Mashup-based Solution for Developing and Deploying Composite Applications in the Upcoming "Ubiquitous SOA"

Service oriented architectures (SOAs) based on Web services have attracted a great interest and IT investments during the last years, principally in the context of business-to-business integration within corporate Intranets. However, they are nowadays evolving to break through enterprise boundaries, in a revolutionary attempt to make the approach pervasive, leading to what we call the ubiquitous SOA, i.e. a SOA conceived as a Web of services made up of compositional resources that empowers end-users to ubiquitously exploit these resources by collaboratively remixing them. In this paper we explore the architectural basis, technologies, frameworks and tools considered necessary to face this novel vision of SOA. We also present the rationale behind EzWeb/FAST: an undergoing EU funded project whose first outcomes could serve as a preliminary proof of concep

Analysis of the Requirements and Methods of Cloud Migration to SaaS Model

Dissertation presented as the partial requirement for obtaining a Master's degree in Information Management, specialization in Knowledge Management and Business IntelligenceIn a fast pace changing globe, where quality and security is a must have and the threads are new every day, companies and IT administrations still doubt about the benefits in running a cloud-based technology and stick with local systems which can be expensive in Cybersecurity and vulnerable at their own risk. This thesis aims to provide guidance and understanding of the key factors that serve as a foundation for the process of migrating a system to a cloud-based software. There are three main types of cloud computing service models and in this thesis is only considered SaaS, also known as Software-as-a-Service. The focus is to demystify some ghosts regarding cloud-based technology, through a comprehensive Model Migration proposal with step-to-step indications, based on a thorough Methodology which is supported by a Literature Review to clarify and justify the decisions made

Software as a Service Adoption: impact on IT workers and functions of IT Department

Software as a Service (SaaS), a type of cloud computing is based on information technology (IT) capabilities in a utility model that enhances the reliability and scalability at relatively low costs as compared to on-premise IT systems. Other benefits SaaS provides to customers include: no upfront investment cost required, elasticity of computing resources, vendor support and upgrades, agile response to markets, usage metered as utility, resource pooling the ability to add computing resources as needed. Consequently, organisations may decide to adopt SaaS model based on these potential benefits. However, these benefits may have some implications on the roles of IT workers and functions of IT department. These implications include: changing IT workers’ skill sets requirements, widespread of layoffs of hardware IT workers, and IT department loses control of IT-Servers, and focuses more on data security, vendor management, as IT system support moves to cloud service provider. Similarly, IT workers believe that turning IT resource and support to a cloud service provider poses significant risks to their own jobs [1]. There is a lack of research conducted on the implications of SaaS model on IT department and associated human resource management. Thus, this paper seeks to fill this gap by examining how SaaS adoption may change IT workers’ roles and tasks, and functions of IT department. Drawing on adaptive structuration theory, a modified framework is constructed to support the change dynamics from SaaS adoption. Using examples of functions of IT department in tertiary institutions, we explored sources of structures from advanced IT and the ways in which organisational and human interactions have an impact on how SaaS is appropriated and institutionalised into business processes, and brings about changes in an organisation. This paper contributes to the theory by examining the way emergent and new structures are formulated at the macro and group level of the organisational structure. Implications for researchers and practitioners are provide

A Cloud-Oriented Green Computing Architecture for E-Learning Applications

Cloud computing is a highly scalable and cost-effective infrastructure for running Web applications. E-learning or e-Learning is one of such Web application has increasingly gained popularity in the recent years, as a comprehensive medium of global education system/training systems. The development of e-Learning Application within the cloud computing environment enables users to access diverse software applications, share data, collaborate more easily, and keep their data safely in the infrastructure. However, the growing demand of Cloud infrastructure has drastically increased the energy consumption of data centers, which has become a critical issue. High energy consumption not only translates to high operational cost, which reduces the profit margin of Cloud providers, but also leads to high carbon emissions which is not environmentally friendly. Hence, energy-efficient solutions are required to minimize the impact of Cloud-Oriented E-Learning on the environment. E-learning methods have drastically changed the educational environment and also reduced the use of papers and ultimately reduce the production of carbon footprint. E-learning methodology is an example of Green computing. Thus, in this paper, it is proposed a Cloud-Oriented Green Computing Architecture for eLearning Applications (COGALA). The e-Learning Applications using COGALA can lower expenses, reduce energy consumption, and help organizations with limited IT resources to deploy and maintain needed software in a timely manner. This paper also discussed the implication of this solution for future research directions to enable Cloud-Oriented Green Computing