ElasTraS: An Elastic Transactional Data Store in the Cloud

Over the last couple of years, "Cloud Computing" or "Elastic Computing" has emerged as a compelling and successful paradigm for internet scale computing. One of the major contributing factors to this success is the elasticity of resources. In spite of the elasticity provided by the infrastructure and the scalable design of the applications, the elephant (or the underlying database), which drives most of these web-based applications, is not very elastic and scalable, and hence limits scalability. In this paper, we propose ElasTraS which addresses this issue of scalability and elasticity of the data store in a cloud computing environment to leverage from the elastic nature of the underlying infrastructure, while providing scalable transactional data access. This paper aims at providing the design of a system in progress, highlighting the major design choices, analyzing the different guarantees provided by the system, and identifying several important challenges for the research community striving for computing in the cloud.Comment: 5 Pages, In Proc. of USENIX HotCloud 200

Prevention of Competition by Competition Law: Evidence from Unbundling Regulation on Fiber-Optic Networks in Japan

This paper finds that a regulation that promotes competition in one market may decrease competition in other related markets. Policy makers in the telecommunication industry currently are facing an important decision about whether to continue unbundling regulations on new optical-fiber lines. I find that unbundling regulation prevents new providers from building optical-fiber networks, by estimating a dynamic entry game with a dataset of fiber-optic network constructions in Japan from 2005 to 2009. In particular, when a new technology is introduced, unbundling regulation has an oligopolization effect on the regulated firms. This finding in the Japanese telecommunications industry suggests that unbundling regulation during periods of new technology diffusion may reduce the price of service but also decrease competition in the infrastructure market.

Work and Employment under the Gig Economy

This paper aims to indicate the key issues yielding to explain why a regulatory framework and correct policy responses are needed for what here we define as a platform 'society' and to identify its key 'collective' features. These include the respect of workers' fundamental rights (i.e. collective bargaining and representation) as well as they include the role of the state and public policy. These reflections are developed in the light of an in-depth examinations of the social implications of the gig-economy for work and employment

From fintechs to banking as a service: global trends banks cannot ignore

In 2009, in the aftermath of the financial crisis, the late Paul Volcker, former chairman of the U.S. Federal Reserve, quipped that “the only useful innovation in banking for the past 20 years” had been the ATM. He went on to call for banks to think more boldly

Regulating for competition with BigTechs: banking-as-a-service and “beyond banking”

En este artículo se analizan dos estrategias novedosas de competencia en el sector bancario: la banca como servicio (banking-as-a-service) y la prestación de servicios más allá de la banca (beyond banking). Se argumenta que estos modelos de negocio emulan la penetración de las BigTech en la prestación de servicios financieros con el trasfondo de su actividad comercial. Pero estos modelos conllevan nuevos riesgos, que requieren respuestas regulatorias adecuadas en una doble vía. En primer lugar, se afirma que la regulación del modelo de competencia disruptivo de las BigTech —en la confluencia de los servicios financieros y la tecnología— precisa de instrumentos de coordinación novedosos entre las distintas áreas de política regulatoria involucradas (banca, pagos, competencia, tecnología digital y datos), así como de una nueva perspectiva sobre el tratamiento de los conglomerados mixtos que consolidan múltiples líneas de negocio y riesgos. En segundo lugar, el hecho de que la «banca como servicio» se base en un pseudo-leasing de la licencia bancaria a empresas no financieras, al objeto de ganar una base transaccional, plantea riesgos morales y de modelo que exigen tratamientos específicos, no muy diferentes de los aplicados al modelo de «originar para distribuir». Las perspectivas de éxito del modelo beyond banking son poco alentadoras en su versión extrema, en la que las entidades de crédito pasan a ser patrocinadoras de plataformas en toda regla, mientras que las versiones híbridas siguen conllevando nuevos riesgos.This paper analyses “banking-as-a-service” and “beyond banking”, two emerging bank competition strategies. These business models are argued to emulate the transaction-based inroads that BigTechs have made into finance. But they entail new risks that call for adequate regulatory responses along a dual track. First, it is argued that regulation of the disruptive competition model of BigTechs at the confluence of finance and technology requires new tools to coordinate the different regulatory policies involved (banking, payments, competition, data, digital) and a new approach to the treatment of mixed business conglomerates that consolidate multiple business lines and risks. Second, the reliance of “banking-as-a-service” on a quasi-renting-out of the banking licence to non-financial companies as a way of obtaining a transactional base poses moral hazard and model risks that require specific treatments not unlike the originate-to-distribute business model did. The prospects for success of the pure version of the “beyond banking” model, where banks become sponsors of full-fledged platforms, are assessed as dim, but hybrid versions still entail new risks

Regulating for competition with BigTechs: banking-as-a-service and “beyond banking”

This paper analyses “banking-as-a-service” and “beyond banking”, two emerging bank competition strategies. These business models are argued to emulate the transaction-based inroads that BigTechs have made into finance. But they entail new risks that call for adequate regulatory responses along a dual track. First, it is argued that regulation of the disruptive competition model of BigTechs at the confluence of finance and technology requires new tools to coordinate the different regulatory policies involved (banking, payments, competition, data, digital) and a new approach to the treatment of mixed business conglomerates that consolidate multiple business lines and risks. Second, the reliance of “banking-as-a-service” on a quasi-renting-out of the banking licence to non-financial companies as a way of obtaining a transactional base poses moral hazard and model risks that require specific treatments not unlike the originate-to-distribute business model did. The prospects for success of the pure version of the “beyond banking” model, where banks become sponsors of full-fledged platforms, are assessed as dim, but hybrid versions still entail new risks

Proposal for shared services performance management model applied to portugueses public administration

Comunicação apresentada no 8º Congresso Nacional de Administração Pública - Desafios e Soluções, em Carcavelos de 21 a 22 de Novembro de 2011.In order to improve the quality of the services and the relationship between the central public administration and citizens the Portuguese government launched an egovernment initiative including both front and back-office processes. The implementation of shared services represents one of the transformation vectors having as major goal the gain of efficacy by reducing the organisational structures and the gain of efficiency through the rationalization of back-office processes. The main target was first the development and implementation of both financial and human resources shared services management solutions and afterwards the enlargement of this concept to other domains such as Information and Communication Technology (ICT). The shared services implementation target is the central public administration, which employs 550.000 workers. Depending on the success of this initiative it may be later extended to regional and local entities encompassing a total of 800.000 workers. This shared services initiative catalyzes the need of having a global public administration structure in order to provide services with the required quality and to implement adequate and flexible process oriented business models. In 2007 GeRAP, a public enterprise owned by the Ministry of Finances and Public Administration, was created aiming a suitable implementation of this paradigm. As an outcome of the financial and human resources shared services implementation experience, a Portuguese Governmental Open Cloud (GO-Cloud) project was launched with the aim of deploying an ICT public infrastructure able to integrate other private and public clouds and to offer quality infrastructure services at lower costs. The GO-Cloud overlays the double objective of establishing a technological platform that will leverage the shared services adoption spreading among public administration entities, concerning both the already deployed financial and budgetary management solution and the shared human resource management solution, and the provisioning of ICT resources and services in a more flexible and effective way. A successful implementation of shared services in a public and wide environment such as the Portuguese public administration requires a suitable reference architecture, reliable and scalable infrastructures, automated procedures, adequate management processes, an agile organization and adequate relationship models, based on a set of core competences. Thus, this paper focuses the way shared services are being implemented and managed in the Portuguese public administration, considering both the scope of this activity and the differences between public and private contexts. It 8º Congresso Nacional de Administração Pública – 2011 | Página 338 also presents the adopted service oriented architecture (SOA) and both the business model and the shared services analysis model (SSAM) used to grant GeRAP internal and external alignment. SSAM contributes with a formal analysis structure through the identification of main pillars that sustain the shared services implementation in Portuguese public administration. The defined pillars will be used as analysis vectors to create a performance model which will be able to evaluate the performance reached by shared services implementation and to anticipate some actions