Nas nuvens ou fora delas, eis a questão

Mestrado em Sistemas de InformaçãoO proposito desta dissertação é contribuir no sentido de uma melhor compreensão sobre a decisão de ir ou não ir para uma solução na cloud quando uma organização é confrontada com a necessidade de criar ou expandir um sistema de informação. Isto é feito recorrendo à identificação de factores técnicos e económicos que devem ser tomados em conta quando planeamos uma nova solução e desenvolver um framework para ajudar os decisores. Os seguintes aspetos são considerados: • Definição de um modelo de referência genérico para funcionalidades de um Sistemas de Informação. • Identificação de algumas métricas básicas para caracterizar performance e custos de Sistemas de Informação. • Analise e caracterização de Sistemas de Informação on-premises: Arquiteturas Elementos de custo Questões de Performance • Analise e caracterização de Sistemas de Informação Cloud: Topologias Estruturas de custo Questões de Performance • Estabelecimento de framework de comparação para a cloud versus on-premises • Casos de uso comparando soluções na cloud e on-premises; • Produção de guidelines (focadas no caso das clouds publicas) Para ilustrar o procedimento, são usados dois business cases, ambos com duas abordagens: uma dedicada aos Profissionais de IT (abordagem técnica), outra aos Gestores/Decisores (abordagem económica).The purpose of this dissertation is to contribute towards a better understanding about the decision to go or not to go for cloud solutions when an organization is confronted with the need to create or enlarge an information system. This is done resorting to the identification of technical and economic factors that must be taken into account when planning a new solution and developing a framework to help decision makers. The following aspects are considered: • Definition of a generic reference model for Information systems functionalities. • Identification of some basic metrics characterizing information systems performance. • Analysis and characterization of on-premisis information systems: Architectures Cost elements Performance issues • Analysis and characetrization of cloud information systems. Typology Cost structures Performance issues • Establishment of a comparison framework for cloud versus on-premises solutions as possible instances of information systems. • Use cases comparing cloud and on-premises solutions. • Production of guidelines (focus on public cloud case) To illustrate the procedure, two business cases are used, both with two approaches: one dedicated to IT Professionals (Technical approach), other to Managers/Decision Makers (Economic approach)

Website Performance Measurements and Related Analysis

Current digitally growing context embodies concepts which are new to the information society and rapidly gaining lots of attention not only in specific e-commerce or e-business areas but also in different other segments which were not accommodated with digital demands. Terms like big data, fast and secure transactions, cloud and IoT are just a few items in the exponentially growing world of digital demands. Hence, a basic requirement related to prerequisites of the digital world is to have an e-business solution that can be easily monitored, which can be enhanced with the help of useful and relevant performance metrics. This situation imposes an adaptable structure which comes because of a comprehensive monitoring activity. In this context, through this paper, we are taking into consideration an in-depth analysis of a website structure, through which different e-business solutions can be evaluated

A Case Study for Business Integration as a Service

This paper presents Business Integration as a Service (BIaaS) to allow two services to work together in the Cloud to achieve a streamline process. We illustrate this integration using two services; Return on Investment (ROI) Measurement as a Service (RMaaS) and Risk Analysis as a Service (RAaaS) in the case study at the University of Southampton. The case study demonstrates the cost-savings and the risk analysis achieved, so two services can work as a single service. Advanced techniques are used to demonstrate statistical services and 3D Visualisation services under the remit of RMaaS and Monte Carlo Simulation as a Service behind the design of RAaaS. Computational results are presented with their implications discussed. Different types of risks associated with Cloud adoption can be calculated easily, rapidly and accurately with the use of BIaaS. This case study confirms the benefits of BIaaS adoption, including cost reduction and improvements in efficiency and risk analysis. Implementation of BIaaS in other organisations is also discussed. Important data arising from the integration of RMaaS and RAaaS are useful for management and stakeholders of University of Southampton

Cloud Storage and Bioinformatics in a private cloud deployment: Lessons for Data Intensive research

This paper describes service portability for a private cloud deployment, including a detailed case study about Cloud Storage and bioinformatics services developed as part of the Cloud Computing Adoption Framework (CCAF). Our Cloud Storage design and deployment is based on Storage Area Network (SAN) technologies, details of which include functionalities, technical implementation, architecture and user support. Experiments for data services (backup automation, data recovery and data migration) are performed and results confirm backup automation is completed swiftly and is reliable for data-intensive research. The data recovery result confirms that execution time is in proportion to quantity of recovered data, but the failure rate increases in an exponential manner. The data migration result confirms execution time is in proportion to disk volume of migrated data, but again the failure rate increases in an exponential manner. In addition, benefits of CCAF are illustrated using several bioinformatics examples such as tumour modelling, brain imaging, insulin molecules and simulations for medical training. Our Cloud Storage solution described here offers cost reduction, time-saving and user friendliness

Challenges for the comprehensive management of cloud services in a PaaS framework

The 4CaaSt project aims at developing a PaaS framework that enables flexible definition, marketing, deployment and management of Cloud-based services and applications. The major innovations proposed by 4CaaSt are the blueprint and its lifecycle management, a one stop shop for Cloud services and a PaaS level resource management featuring elasticity. 4CaaSt also provides a portfolio of ready to use Cloud native services and Cloud-aware immigrant technologies

Healthcare Data Analytics on the Cloud

Meaningful analysis of voluminous health information has always been a challenge in most healthcare organizations. Accurate and timely information required by the management to lead a healthcare organization through the challenges found in the industry can be obtained using business intelligence (BI) or business analytics tools. However, these require large capital investments to implement and support the large volumes of data that needs to be analyzed to identify trends. They also require enormous processing power which places pressure on the business resources in addition to the dynamic changes in the digital technology. This paper evaluates the various nuances of business analytics of healthcare hosted on the cloud computing environment. The paper explores BI being offered as Software as a Service (SaaS) solution towards offering meaningful use of information for improving functions in healthcare enterprise. It also attempts to identify the challenges that healthcare enterprises face when making use of a BI SaaS solution