Analysis of cloud storage prices

Cloud storage is fast securing its role as a major repository for both consumers and business customers. Many companies now offer storage solutions, sometimes for free for limited amounts of capacity. We have surveyed the pricing plans of a selection of major cloud providers and compared them using the unit price as the means of comparison. All the providers, excepting Amazon, adopt a bundling pricing scheme; Amazon follows instead a block-declining pricing policy. We compare the pricing plans through a double approach: a pointwise comparison for each value of capacity, and an overall comparison using a two-part tariff approximation and a Pareto-dominance criterion. Under both approaches, most providers appear to offer pricing plans that are more expensive and can be excluded from a procurement selection in favour of a limited number of dominant providers.Comment: 17 pages, 17 figures, 17 reference

Immigrants and Billion Dollar Startups

Immigrants play a key role in creating new, fast-growing companies, as evidenced by the prevalence of foreignborn founders and key personnel in the nation's leading privately-held companies. Immigrants have started more than half (44 of 87) of America's startup companies valued at $1 billion dollars or more and are key members of management or product development teams in over 70 percent (62 of 87) of these companies. The research finds that among the billion dollar startup companies, immigrant founders have created an average of approximately 760 jobs per company in the United States. The collective value of the 44 immigrant-founded companies is$168 billion, which is close to half the value of the stock markets of Russia or Mexico.The research involved conducting interviews and gathering information on the 87 U.S. startup companies valued at over $1 billion (as of January 1, 2016) that have yet to become publicly traded on the U.S. stock market and are tracked by The Wall Street Journal and Dow Jones VentureSource. The companies, all privately-held and with the potential to become publicly traded on the stock market, are today each valued at$1 billion or more and have received venture capital (equity) financing

Predikt : a simpler machine learning experience

textWith the exponential growth in volume of data being generated by the businesses today, the need for automated systems to facilitate decision making is growing. In many cases, the volume of data has reached the scale where it is not humanly possible to analyze the relevant data using traditional processes, which are dependent on manual intervention, to reach a good decision. The increase in diversity of data sources (internal, external, social, sensors, etc) has added significantly to the challenge of decision making. Predikt presents a simplified approach for the automation of decision making in organizations using Data Mining and Machine Learning techniques with minimal human intervention. Human Intervention, when required, will typically be to accept, reject or override a decision already made by the machine. Predikt front-end as well as back-end is able to adapt to end users unique requirements. Predikt is able to render User Interface dynamically based on User Inputs, while backend is able to do intelligent data processing such as binning (for numeric columns) and multiple model evaluation.Electrical and Computer Engineerin

Learning management systems and cloud file hosting services: A study on students’ acceptance

The aim of this paper is to investigate the motivations that lead higher education students to replace several Learning Management Systems (LMS) services with cloud file hosting services for information sharing and collaboration among them. The research approach is based on the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM). More specifically, the model is devoted to identifying barriers and enablers to the acceptance of these technologies. A questionnaire comprising three factors (Attitude toward using technology, Perceived ease of use and Perceived usefulness) was applied to a sample consisting of 121 higher education students. Results show that the perceived ease of use of cloud file hosting services is above that of LMS tools and services and that cloud file hosting services presented higher levels of perceived usefulness than standard learning management tools. In addition, attitude toward using cloud file hosting services is well above that of using LMS tools

An analysis of food waste mitigation strategies in grocery retail: practices and lessons from the German market

Globally, one third of the food produced for human consumption is wasted or lost every year. This has serious economic, environmental and social consequences, namely in industrialized countries. As intermediaries between producers and consumers, food retailers such as supermarkets play a significant role in mitigating food waste. Further research is required to enable professionals to be effective in developing food waste mitigation strategies. The study's aim is to find the most effective food waste mitigation strategies in grocery retail and to develop a "Food Waste Strategy Framework" that combines knowledge from previous research with the experience of experts in Germany. In the context of qualitative content analysis, eight semi-structured interviews with food waste experts from supermarkets, food charities and other organizations in the German grocery retail sector were conducted. Data was coded and analyzed with a deductive-inductive approach. Results reveal five internal and five external causes driving food waste, plus sixteen strategy areas with forty-one possible food mitigation strategies. German experts suggested price reduction on dairy products and perishables, employee awareness training, customer campaigns about the best-before date, updated inventory control systems and donation to food charity organizations as the most effective strategies against food waste.A nível global, um terço dos alimentos produzidos para consumo humano é desperdiçado ou extraviado a cada ano. Particularmente nos países industrializados, isto tem enormes consequências económicas, ambientais e sociais. Enquanto intermediários entre produtores e consumidores, retalhistas alimentares, como os supermercados, desempenham um papel importante para mitigar o desperdício alimentar. Faltam estratégias de mitigação de desperdício alimentar para apoiar os profissionais do setor. O objetivo deste estudo é encontrar as estratégias mais eficazes de mitigação de desperdício alimentar no retalho de mercearia e desenvolver um "Quadro Estratégico para o Desperdício Alimentar" que combine o conhecimento anterior com a experiência de especialistas na Alemanha. No âmbito da análise qualitativa de conteúdos, foram conduzidas oito entrevistas semi-estruturadas com especialistas em desperdício alimentar de supermercados, instituições de caridade alimentar e outras organizações do retalho alemão. Os dados foram codificados e analisados através de uma abordagem dedutiva-indutiva. Os resultados revelam cinco fatores internos e cinco fatores externos que levam ao desperdício alimentar, bem como dezasseis áreas estratégicas com quarenta e uma estratégias possíveis para a mitigação do problema. Os especialistas alemães identificam a redução de preço em lacticínios e outros produtos perecíveis, formações de sensibilização para os funcionários, campanhas sobre data de consumo preferencial para os clientes, atualização de sistemas de controlo de inventário e donativos a instituições de caridade alimentar como as estratégias mais eficazes contra o desperdício alimentar

Inside Dropbox: Understanding Personal Cloud Storage Services

Personal cloud storage services are gaining popularity. With a rush of providers to enter the market and an increasing of- fer of cheap storage space, it is to be expected that cloud storage will soon generate a high amount of Internet traffic. Very little is known about the architecture and the perfor- mance of such systems, and the workload they have to face. This understanding is essential for designing efficient cloud storage systems and predicting their impact on the network. This paper presents a characterization of Dropbox, the leading solution in personal cloud storage in our datasets. By means of passive measurements, we analyze data from four vantage points in Europe, collected during 42 consecu- tive days. Our contributions are threefold: Firstly, we are the first to study Dropbox, which we show to be the most widely-used cloud storage system, already accounting for a volume equivalent to around one third of the YouTube traffic at campus networks on some days. Secondly, we characterize the workload typical users in different environments gener- ate to the system, highlighting how this reflects on network traffic. Lastly, our results show possible performance bot- tlenecks caused by both the current system architecture and the storage protocol. This is exacerbated for users connected far from control and storage data-center

Robust Efficiency Evaluation of NextCloud and GoogleCloud

Cloud storage services such as GoogleCloud and NextCloud have become increasingly popular among Internet users and businesses. Despite the many encrypted file cloud systems being implemented worldwide today for different purposes, we are still faced with the problem of their usage, security, and performance. Although some cloud storage solutions are very efficient in communication across different clients, others are better in file encryption, such as images, videos, and text files. Therefore, it is evident that the efficiency of these algorithms varies based on the purpose and type of encryption and compression. This paper focuses on the comparative analysis of NextCloud with composed end-to-end solutions that use both an unencrypted cloud storage and an encrypted solution. In this paper, we measured the network use, file output size, and computation time of given workloads for two different services to thoroughly evaluate the efficiency of NextCloud and GoogleCloud. Our findings concluded that there is similar network usage and synchronization time. However, GoogleCloud had more CPU utilization than NextCloud. On the other hand, NextCloud had a longer delay when uploading files to their cloud service. Our experimental results show that the evaluation model is considered robust if its output and forecasts are consistently accurate, even if one or more of the input variables or assumptions are drastically changed due to unforeseen circumstances

Challenges of Information and Communication Technologies Usage in E-Business Systems

In today\u27s identification and data collection methods on traffic entities, large number of traffic and logistic systems uses one of the automatic identification and data capture (AIDC) technologies. The mentioned group contains information and communication technologies such as radio‐frequency identification (RFID), real‐time location systems (RTLS), near field communication (NFC), global positioning system (GPS), and beacon and advanced tagging technologies such as barcode and quick response code (QR code) which can be implemented with function of mobile traffic entities identification in traffic environment. In this chapter, possibilities and characteristics of mentioned technologies will be described from the aspect of their usage in traffic system through implementation of e‐business. Data collection and exchange concept will be based on cloud computing and Internet of Things concepts. Through various case study examples in traffic environment, more efficient use of AIDC technologies in traffic system will be shown