Measuring the Business Value of Cloud Computing

The importance of demonstrating the value achieved from IT investments is long established in the Computer Science (CS) and Information Systems (IS) literature. However, emerging technologies such as the ever-changing complex area of cloud computing present new challenges and opportunities for demonstrating how IT investments lead to business value. Recent reviews of extant literature highlights the need for multi-disciplinary research. This research should explore and further develops the conceptualization of value in cloud computing research. In addition, there is a need for research which investigates how IT value manifests itself across the chain of service provision and in inter-organizational scenarios. This open access book will review the state of the art from an IS, Computer Science and Accounting perspective, will introduce and discuss the main techniques for measuring business value for cloud computing in a variety of scenarios, and illustrate these with mini-case studies

Multi-Drone-Cell 3D Trajectory Planning and Resource Allocation for Drone-Assisted Radio Access Networks

Equipped with communication modules, drones can perform as drone-cells (DCs) that provide on-demand communication services to users in various scenarios, such as traffic monitoring, Internet of things (IoT) data collections, and temporal communication provisioning. As the aerial relay nodes between terrestrial users and base stations (BSs), DCs are leveraged to extend wireless connections for uncovered users of radio access networks (RAN), which forms the drone-assisted RAN (DA-RAN). In DA-RAN, the communication coverage, quality-of-service (QoS) performance and deployment flexibility can be improved due to the line-of-sight DC-to-ground (D2G) wireless links and the dynamic deployment capabilities of DCs. Considering the special mobility pattern, channel model, energy consumption, and other features of DCs, it is essential yet challenging to design the flying trajectories and resource allocation schemes for DA-RAN. In specific, given the emerging D2G communication models and dynamic deployment capability of DCs, new DC deployment strategies are required by DA-RAN. Moreover, to exploit the fully controlled mobility of DCs and promote the user fairness, the flying trajectories of DCs and the D2G communications must be jointly optimized. Further, to serve the high-mobility users (e.g. vehicular users) whose mobility patterns are hard to be modeled, both the trajectory planning and resource allocation schemes for DA-RAN should be re-designed to adapt to the variations of terrestrial traffic. To address the above challenges, in this thesis, we propose a DA-RAN architecture in which multiple DCs are leveraged to relay data between BSs and terrestrial users. Based on the theoretical analyses of the D2G communication, DC energy consumption, and DC mobility features, the deployment, trajectory planning and communication resource allocation of multiple DCs are jointly investigated for both quasi-static and high-mobility users. We first analyze the communication coverage, drone-to-BS (D2B) backhaul link quality, and optimal flying height of the DC according to the state-of-the-art drone-to-user (D2U) and D2B channel models. We then formulate the multi-DC three-dimensional (3D) deployment problem with the objective of maximizing the ratio of effectively covered users while guaranteeing D2B link qualities. To solve the problem, a per-drone iterated particle swarm optimization (DI-PSO) algorithm is proposed, which prevents the large particle searching space and the high violating probability of constraints existing in the pure PSO based algorithm. Simulations show that the DI-PSO algorithm can achieve higher coverage ratio with less complexity comparing to the pure PSO based algorithm. Secondly, to improve overall network performance and the fairness among edge and central users, we design 3D trajectories for multiple DCs in DA-RAN. The multi-DC 3D trajectory planning and scheduling is formulated as a mixed integer non-linear programming (MINLP) problem with the objective of maximizing the average D2U throughput. To address the non-convexity and NP-hardness of the MINLP problem due to the 3D trajectory, we first decouple the MINLP problem into multiple integer linear programming and quasi-convex sub-problems in which user association, D2U communication scheduling, horizontal trajectories and flying heights of DBSs are respectively optimized. Then, we design a multi-DC 3D trajectory planning and scheduling algorithm to solve the sub-problems iteratively based on the block coordinate descent (BCD) method. A k-means-based initial trajectory generation scheme and a search-based start slot scheduling scheme are also designed to improve network performance and control mutual interference between DCs, respectively. Compared with the static DBS deployment, the proposed trajectory planning scheme can achieve much lower average value and standard deviation of D2U pathloss, which indicate the improvements of network throughput and user fairness. Thirdly, considering the highly dynamic and uncertain environment composed by high-mobility users, we propose a hierarchical deep reinforcement learning (DRL) based multi-DC trajectory planning and resource allocation (HDRLTPRA) scheme for high-mobility users. The objective is to maximize the accumulative network throughput while satisfying user fairness, DC power consumption, and DC-to-ground link quality constraints. To address the high uncertainties of environment, we decouple the multi-DC TPRA problem into two hierarchical sub-problems, i.e., the higher-level global trajectory planning sub-problem and the lower-level local TPRA sub-problem. First, the global trajectory planning sub-problem is to address trajectory planning for multiple DCs in the RAN over a long time period. To solve the sub-problem, we propose a multi-agent DRL based global trajectory planning (MARL-GTP) algorithm in which the non-stationary state space caused by multi-DC environment is addressed by the multi-agent fingerprint technique. Second, based on the global trajectory planning results, the local TPRA (LTPRA) sub-problem is investigated independently for each DC to control the movement and transmit power allocation based on the real-time user traffic variations. A deep deterministic policy gradient based LTPRA (DDPG-LTPRA) algorithm is then proposed to solve the LTPRA sub-problem. With the two algorithms addressing both sub-problems at different decision granularities, the multi-DC TPRA problem can be resolved by the HDRLTPRA scheme. Simulation results show that 40% network throughput improvement can be achieved by the proposed HDRLTPRA scheme over the non-learning-based TPRA scheme. In summary, we have investigated the multi-DC 3D deployment, trajectory planning and communication resource allocation in DA-RAN considering different user mobility patterns in this thesis. The proposed schemes and theoretical results should provide useful guidelines for future research in DC trajectory planning, resource allocation, as well as the real deployment of DCs in complex environments with diversified users

Measuring the Business Value of Cloud Computing

The importance of demonstrating the value achieved from IT investments is long established in the Computer Science (CS) and Information Systems (IS) literature. However, emerging technologies such as the ever-changing complex area of cloud computing present new challenges and opportunities for demonstrating how IT investments lead to business value. Recent reviews of extant literature highlights the need for multi-disciplinary research. This research should explore and further develops the conceptualization of value in cloud computing research. In addition, there is a need for research which investigates how IT value manifests itself across the chain of service provision and in inter-organizational scenarios. This open access book will review the state of the art from an IS, Computer Science and Accounting perspective, will introduce and discuss the main techniques for measuring business value for cloud computing in a variety of scenarios, and illustrate these with mini-case studies

Evaluating Sociotechnical Factors Associated With Telecom Service Provisioning: A Case Study

Provisioning Internet services remains an area of concern for Internet service providers. Despite investments to improve resources and technology, the understanding of sociotechnical factors that influence the service-provisioning life cycle remains limited. The purpose of this case study was to evaluate the influence of sociotechnical factors associated with telecom service provisioning and to explore the critical success and failure factors, specifically in the telecommunication industry of Kuwait. Guided by sociotechnical systems theory, this qualitative exploratory case study approach examined a purposeful sample of 19 participants comprising of managers, engineers, and technicians who had the knowledge and experience of the service-provisioning life cycle. Semistructured interviews, project logs, and a self-created follow-up questionnaire were the primary sources of data. Thematic analysis techniques assisted in coding the data and developing themes, which resulted in a set of critical success and failure factors that influence the service-provisioning life cycle. Cross-functional communication, risk management practices, infrastructure availability, and employee skill development were among the emergent factors that influenced the service implementation. Internet service providers may use the results from this study to improve the service-provisioning life cycle. Successful implementations will promote an environment of positive social change that will increase employee motivation, productivity, and employee morale

Computer-Mediated Communication

This book is an anthology of present research trends in Computer-mediated Communications (CMC) from the point of view of different application scenarios. Four different scenarios are considered: telecommunication networks, smart health, education, and human-computer interaction. The possibilities of interaction introduced by CMC provide a powerful environment for collaborative human-to-human, computer-mediated interaction across the globe

A Survey on Security and Privacy of 5G Technologies: Potential Solutions, Recent Advancements, and Future Directions

Security has become the primary concern in many telecommunications industries today as risks can have high consequences. Especially, as the core and enable technologies will be associated with 5G network, the confidential information will move at all layers in future wireless systems. Several incidents revealed that the hazard encountered by an infected wireless network, not only affects the security and privacy concerns, but also impedes the complex dynamics of the communications ecosystem. Consequently, the complexity and strength of security attacks have increased in the recent past making the detection or prevention of sabotage a global challenge. From the security and privacy perspectives, this paper presents a comprehensive detail on the core and enabling technologies, which are used to build the 5G security model; network softwarization security, PHY (Physical) layer security and 5G privacy concerns, among others. Additionally, the paper includes discussion on security monitoring and management of 5G networks. This paper also evaluates the related security measures and standards of core 5G technologies by resorting to different standardization bodies and provide a brief overview of 5G standardization security forces. Furthermore, the key projects of international significance, in line with the security concerns of 5G and beyond are also presented. Finally, a future directions and open challenges section has included to encourage future research.European CommissionNational Research Tomsk Polytechnic UniversityUpdate citation details during checkdate report - A

Architectures for the Future Networks and the Next Generation Internet: A Survey

Networking research funding agencies in the USA, Europe, Japan, and other countries are encouraging research on revolutionary networking architectures that may or may not be bound by the restrictions of the current TCP/IP based Internet. We present a comprehensive survey of such research projects and activities. The topics covered include various testbeds for experimentations for new architectures, new security mechanisms, content delivery mechanisms, management and control frameworks, service architectures, and routing mechanisms. Delay/Disruption tolerant networks, which allow communications even when complete end-to-end path is not available, are also discussed

Ecosystem-Driven Design of In-Home Terminals Based on Open Platform for the

Abstract—In-home healthcare services based on the Internet-of-Things (IoT) have great business potentials. To turn it into reality, a business ecosystem should be established first. Technical solutions should therefore aim for a cooperative ecosystem by meeting the interoperability, security, and system integration requirements. In this paper, we propose an ecosystem-driven design strategy and apply it in the design of an open-platform-based in-home healthcare terminal. A cooperative business ecosystem is formulated by merging the traditiona

Resource management in future mobile networks: from millimetre-wave backhauls to airborne access networks

The next generation of mobile networks will connect vast numbers of devices and support services with diverse requirements. Enabling technologies such as millimetre-wave (mm-wave) backhauling and network slicing allow for increased wireless capacities and logical partitioning of physical deployments, yet introduce a number of challenges. These include among others the precise and rapid allocation of network resources among applications, elucidating the interactions between new mobile networking technology and widely used protocols, and the agile control of mobile infrastructure, to provide users with reliable wireless connectivity in extreme scenarios. This thesis presents several original contributions that address these challenges. In particular, I will first describe the design and evaluation of an airtime allocation and scheduling mechanism devised specifically for mm-wave backhauls, explicitly addressing inter-flow fairness and capturing the unique characteristics of mm-wave communications. Simulation results will demonstrate 5x throughput gains and a 5-fold improvement in fairness over recent mm-wave scheduling solutions. Second, I will introduce a utility optimisation framework targeting virtually sliced mm-wave backhauls that are shared by a number of applications with distinct requirements. Based on this framework, I will present a deep learning solution that can be trained within minutes, following which it computes rate allocations that match those obtained with state-of-the-art global optimisation algorithms. The proposed solution outperforms a baseline greedy approach by up to 62%, in terms of network utility, while running orders of magnitude faster. Third, the thesis investigates the behaviour of the Transport Control Protocol (TCP) in Long-Term Evolution (LTE) networks and discusses the implications of employing Radio Link Control (RLC) acknowledgements under different link qualities, on the performance of transport protocols. Fourth, I will introduce a reinforcement learning approach to optimising the performance of airborne cellular networks serving users in emergency settings, demonstrating rapid convergence (approx. 2.5 hours on a desktop machine) and a 5dB improvement of the median Signal-to-Noise-plus-Interference-Ratio (SINR) perceived by users, over a heuristic based benchmark solution. Finally, the thesis discusses promising future research directions that follow from the results obtained throughout this PhD project

5G network slicing for rural connectivity: multi-tenancy in wireless networks

As the need for wireless broadband continues to grow around the world, there is an increasing focus to minimise the existing digital divide and ensuring that everyone receives high-quality internet services, especially the inhabitants of rural areas. As a result, different technological solutions are being studied and trialled for improving rural connectivity, such as 5G with dynamic spectrum access. One of the architectures of 5G is network slicing, which supports network virtualisation and consists of independent logical networks, called slices, on the 5G network. Network slicing supports the multi-tenancy of different operators on the same physical network, and this feature is known as neutral host networks (NHN). It allows multiple operators to co-exist on the same physical network but on different virtual networks to serve end users. Generally, the 5G NHN deployment is handled by an infrastructure provider (InP), who could be a mobile network operator (MNO), an Internet service provider, a third-party operator, etc. At the same time, potential tenants would lease slices from the InP. The NHN strategy would help reduce resource duplication and increase the utilisation of existing resources. The existing research into NHN for small cells, in-building connectivity solutions, and other deployment scenarios help to understand the technological and business requirements. End-to-end sharing across operators to provide services to their end users is another innovative application of 5G NHN that has been tested for dense areas. Meanwhile, the feasibility and policy impact of NHN is not studied extensively for the rural scenario. The research in this thesis examines the use of NHN in macro- and small-cell networks for 5G communication systems to minimise the digital divide, with a special focus on rural areas. The study also presents and analyses the 5G multi-tenancy system design for the rural wireless scenario, focusing mainly on exploring suitable business cases through network economics, techno-economic study, and game theory analysis. The results obtained from the study, such as cost analysis, business models, sensitivity analysis, and pricing strategies, help in formulating the policy on infrastructure sharing to improve rural connectivity. The contributions of the thesis are useful for stakeholders and policymakers to assess the suitability of the rural 5G NHN by exploring state-of-the-art technologies, techno-economic analysis, sensitivity analysis, newer business models, investment assessment, cost allocation, and risk sharing. Initially, the research gap is highlighted through the extensive literature review and stakeholders’ views on rural connectivity collected from discussions with them. First, the in-depth discussion on the network economics of the rural 5G NHN includes the study of potential future scenarios, value network configurations, spectrum access strategy models, and business models. Secondly, the techno-economic analysis studies the key performance indicators (KPI), cost analysis, return on investment, net present value, and sensitivity analysis, with the application for the rural parts of the UK and India. Finally, the game theory framework includes the study of strategic interaction among the two key stakeholders, InP and the MNO, using models such as investment games and pricing strategies during multi-tenancy. The research concludes by presenting the contribution towards the knowledge and future work.As the need for wireless broadband continues to grow around the world, there is an increasing focus to minimise the existing digital divide and ensuring that everyone receives high-quality internet services, especially the inhabitants of rural areas. As a result, different technological solutions are being studied and trialled for improving rural connectivity, such as 5G with dynamic spectrum access. One of the architectures of 5G is network slicing, which supports network virtualisation and consists of independent logical networks, called slices, on the 5G network. Network slicing supports the multi-tenancy of different operators on the same physical network, and this feature is known as neutral host networks (NHN). It allows multiple operators to co-exist on the same physical network but on different virtual networks to serve end users. Generally, the 5G NHN deployment is handled by an infrastructure provider (InP), who could be a mobile network operator (MNO), an Internet service provider, a third-party operator, etc. At the same time, potential tenants would lease slices from the InP. The NHN strategy would help reduce resource duplication and increase the utilisation of existing resources. The existing research into NHN for small cells, in-building connectivity solutions, and other deployment scenarios help to understand the technological and business requirements. End-to-end sharing across operators to provide services to their end users is another innovative application of 5G NHN that has been tested for dense areas. Meanwhile, the feasibility and policy impact of NHN is not studied extensively for the rural scenario. The research in this thesis examines the use of NHN in macro- and small-cell networks for 5G communication systems to minimise the digital divide, with a special focus on rural areas. The study also presents and analyses the 5G multi-tenancy system design for the rural wireless scenario, focusing mainly on exploring suitable business cases through network economics, techno-economic study, and game theory analysis. The results obtained from the study, such as cost analysis, business models, sensitivity analysis, and pricing strategies, help in formulating the policy on infrastructure sharing to improve rural connectivity. The contributions of the thesis are useful for stakeholders and policymakers to assess the suitability of the rural 5G NHN by exploring state-of-the-art technologies, techno-economic analysis, sensitivity analysis, newer business models, investment assessment, cost allocation, and risk sharing. Initially, the research gap is highlighted through the extensive literature review and stakeholders’ views on rural connectivity collected from discussions with them. First, the in-depth discussion on the network economics of the rural 5G NHN includes the study of potential future scenarios, value network configurations, spectrum access strategy models, and business models. Secondly, the techno-economic analysis studies the key performance indicators (KPI), cost analysis, return on investment, net present value, and sensitivity analysis, with the application for the rural parts of the UK and India. Finally, the game theory framework includes the study of strategic interaction among the two key stakeholders, InP and the MNO, using models such as investment games and pricing strategies during multi-tenancy. The research concludes by presenting the contribution towards the knowledge and future work