Autonomic Computing

Autonomic computing (AC) has as its vision the creation of self-managing systems to address today’s con-cerns of complexity and total cost of ownership while meeting tomorrow’s needs for pervasive and ubiquitous computation and communication. This paper reports on the latest auto-nomic systems research and technologies to influence the industry; it looks behind AC, summarising what it is, the current state-of-the-art research, related work and initiatives, highlights research and technology transfer issues and concludes with further and recommended reading

"May I borrow Your Filter?" Exchanging Filters to Combat Spam in a Community

Leveraging social networks in computer systems can be effective in dealing with a number of trust and security issues. Spam is one such issue where the "wisdom of crowds" can be harnessed by mining the collective knowledge of ordinary individuals. In this paper, we present a mechanism through which members of a virtual community can exchange information to combat spam. Previous attempts at collaborative spam filtering have concentrated on digest-based indexing techniques to share digests or fingerprints of emails that are known to be spam. We take a different approach and allow users to share their spam filters instead, thus dramatically reducing the amount of traffic generated in the network. The resultant diversity in the filters and cooperation in a community allows it to respond to spam in an autonomic fashion. As a test case for exchanging filters we use the popular SpamAssassin spam filtering software and show that exchanging spam filters provides an alternative method to improve spam filtering performance

Using creative holism to inform new partnerships as a component of responsivity in the FET sector.

Doctor of Philosophy in Business Administration. University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban 2011.I see my research as an exercise in critical systemic practice, expressed as Creative Holism, an approach to organisational research in complex problematical situations attributed to Jackson (2003; 2006), which informs my living theory, attributed to Whitehead (2008), of educating professional practitioners. I make the argument that my personal understanding of my role as a university lecturer includes a strong element of being an agent of transformation in that I am not merely conveying knowledge about a field or about a profession but am, in a sense, an embodiment of that knowledge. Moreover, I take ownership of the direction, focus and biases in my own knowledge and research because they are part of who I am and are a result of my limited perspective. By way of example, I provide a rationale for and inform a professional identity construction, namely new partnerships. I consider this within a context, namely students involved in a particular study in Further Education and Training (FET) who happen to be college managers. The concept of new partnerships and the linked leadership construct of connective leadership are applied to this cadre. This research is also located within the ontology and epistemology of critical systems thinking and draws on the Creative Holism advocated by Jackson as a methodology. Moreover, it defines living theory as a systemic methodology and locates it within the Creative Holism typology of systems methodologies. My thesis adds to our examples of the application of Creative Holism. It focuses on the institutional problem situations in which the FET managers are situated, especially as they do or do not focus on partnerships within their professional thinking. I use systems methodologies, within the Creative Holism framework, to inform those situations, and use a particular combination of methodologies within a critical systems rationale. In particular, I suggest that critical systems thinking provides a vehicle for my exploration of my living theory, especially as I elucidate my own thinking about various expressions of institutional life and the reality that such life for the individual can be liberating or confining and repressing. My broad value position is that organisational life should always hold out the possibility of living out one’s humanity with dignity and performing a worthwhile purpose in society. While I realise that for many, this is not their lived reality, it remains my espoused aspiration and a driver in and for my own work. In considering the work attributed to FET Colleges, I engage with new partnerships to provide a theoretical framework and refine this to focus on the strategic partnership capabilities and potential of FET Colleges. In doing this I integrate new partnerships as a field of study with critical systems thinking as a vehicle through which to investigate partnerships and build our knowledge of social partnerships. My purpose is to improve my understanding of social partnerships as it relates to FET and improve my practice in facilitating curriculum to FET practitioners. In using critical systems thinking, I use Soft Systems Methodology to draw up a set of recommendations and thereafter use Viable Systems Modelling to suggest a framework for engagement for improvement in the partnership capacity of the FET Colleges

Cognitive Hyperconnected Digital Transformation

Cognitive Hyperconnected Digital Transformation provides an overview of the current Internet of Things (IoT) landscape, ranging from research, innovation and development priorities to enabling technologies in a global context. It is intended as a standalone book in a series that covers the Internet of Things activities of the IERC-Internet of Things European Research Cluster, including both research and technological innovation, validation and deployment. The book builds on the ideas put forward by the European Research Cluster, the IoT European Platform Initiative (IoT-EPI) and the IoT European Large-Scale Pilots Programme, presenting global views and state-of-the-art results regarding the challenges facing IoT research, innovation, development and deployment in the next years. Hyperconnected environments integrating industrial/business/consumer IoT technologies and applications require new IoT open systems architectures integrated with network architecture (a knowledge-centric network for IoT), IoT system design and open, horizontal and interoperable platforms managing things that are digital, automated and connected and that function in real-time with remote access and control based on Internet-enabled tools. The IoT is bridging the physical world with the virtual world by combining augmented reality (AR), virtual reality (VR), machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI) to support the physical-digital integrations in the Internet of mobile things based on sensors/actuators, communication, analytics technologies, cyber-physical systems, software, cognitive systems and IoT platforms with multiple functionalities. These IoT systems have the potential to understand, learn, predict, adapt and operate autonomously. They can change future behaviour, while the combination of extensive parallel processing power, advanced algorithms and data sets feed the cognitive algorithms that allow the IoT systems to develop new services and propose new solutions. IoT technologies are moving into the industrial space and enhancing traditional industrial platforms with solutions that break free of device-, operating system- and protocol-dependency. Secure edge computing solutions replace local networks, web services replace software, and devices with networked programmable logic controllers (NPLCs) based on Internet protocols replace devices that use proprietary protocols. Information captured by edge devices on the factory floor is secure and accessible from any location in real time, opening the communication gateway both vertically (connecting machines across the factory and enabling the instant availability of data to stakeholders within operational silos) and horizontally (with one framework for the entire supply chain, across departments, business units, global factory locations and other markets). End-to-end security and privacy solutions in IoT space require agile, context-aware and scalable components with mechanisms that are both fluid and adaptive. The convergence of IT (information technology) and OT (operational technology) makes security and privacy by default a new important element where security is addressed at the architecture level, across applications and domains, using multi-layered distributed security measures. Blockchain is transforming industry operating models by adding trust to untrusted environments, providing distributed security mechanisms and transparent access to the information in the chain. Digital technology platforms are evolving, with IoT platforms integrating complex information systems, customer experience, analytics and intelligence to enable new capabilities and business models for digital business