Towards integrating information of service level agreement and resources as a services (RaaS) for cloud computing environment

Cloud computing describes services and applications that are extended to be accessible through the Internet. Service Level Agreement (SLA) is a contractual agreement that has been established between the members of Cloud Service Provider (CSP) that consists of the service provider and its recipient for a specific application of services based on its allocating and sharing Resources as a Service (RaaS). In this context, there are many parties who are very concerning about it, but unfortunately there is lack of a common mapping of SLA information and RaaS of best practice as a guideline that can be used by CSP in making decision for the future purposes in engaging with services in the cloud computing environment. Therefore, the main goal of this paper is to integrate information of SLA and RaaS in order to ensure everybody who are providing and receiving the services in the cloud particularly will be satisfied and getting the best maximum Return Of the Investment (ROI) in allocating and sharing resources among the providers and recipients in cloud computing environment. As a result, some attributes such as reliability, readability and standardization of Software as a Service (SaaS), Platform as a Service (PaaS) and Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) are found to be high

Utilizing usability evaluating model in applying CMM to improve.

Maintenance plays an important role in the life cycle of a software product. It is estimated that there are more than 100 billion lines of code in production in the world. As much as 80% of it is unstructured, patched and not well documented. Maintenance can alleviate these problems. The purpose of this paper is to explore the use of the Capability Maturity Model (CMM) to improve the quality of software maintenance process (SMP). The architecture of the CMM model has been retained almost as is while its content, which was specific to the development process, has been either modified or extende d to take into account the characteristics specified to the maintenance function, these characteristics were th en organized into key process areas (KPAs) of CMM model. This paper applied the definition of (ISO 9241-1 1, 1998) that examines effectiveness, efficiency, and satisfaction. The emphasis will be given to the SMP activitie

A study on hygienic standard of food premises and microbiological quality of food in Kota Bharu

A cross sectional study was carried out to determine the total plate count, coliform and E. coli counts in 712 selected foods sample taken from 362 food premises in the area under the Municipal Jwisdiction of Kota Bharu. The foods were classified according to the groups. Standard method were used to determine the total plate count (TPC in CFU/gm), coliform count (CC in :M:PN/ml) and E. coli count in ( MPN/ml). Microbiological analysis of food samples showed that 34.08% of sample had unsatisfactory in total plate count, 47.8% in coliform count and 24.7% in E. coli count. E. coli count was detected more in staple foods as compared to snacks/ kuih. There was a significant difference of the satisfactory levels of microbiological analysis amongst different groups of food (P<0.001). This study was found to have overall relationship between microbiological findings of selected food examination and the hygiene score of food premises. Appropriate measures, such as education of food handlers in improving the hygienic practice, particularly by environmental health officers, public health inspectors and local authorities are needed in order to reduce the prevalence of food borne diseases

A notification system model for bioinformatics community of practice

Bioinformatics can be considered as a new field of study and it promises a vast exploration area (Carzaniga., Rosenblum., Wolf ., 2001). In order to expedite the maturity in this area, a proper and supportive portal where all researchers could gather and cooperate in conducting their research need to be established. One of the features in a portal that can assist Bioinformatics researchers in performing their work is the ability of the portal to notify. Notification system is a combination of software and hardware to provide a method of distributing message(s) to a set of recipients. The notification messages could assist the recipients in many ways, from time saving and cost saving till life saving. Notification system can be developed with numerous functions depending on the needs and one of the most beneficial functions in research area is notification on the next most relevant knowledge to be read. This type of notification could lessen the researchers’ time in finding the correct thus enhancing their research efficiency. Another type of notification that could assist researchers is the events reminder. Busy and hectic researchers could forget their pack schedule and put total focus on their research while the reminder prompts them when it is time through Windows’ pop up, email and SMS as the means of delivering the messages. Whilst the knowledge management system (KMS) provides a sturdy basic for the Bioinformatics portal as a whole, the agent technology support the operation of the notification system. Agent technology offers great capabilities in ensuring the recipients is notified accordingly through its autonomous, learning and cooperative characteristics. The objective of this project is to build a notification system for Bioinformatics community of practice (CoP). Researchers in this community could utilize this system to make their research process more efficient

Utilizing usability model with multi-agent technology to facilitate knowledge sharing of software maintenance process knowledge environment.

This paper described a system to manage knowledge generated during the software maintenance process (SMP). Knowledge Management System (KMS) is utilizing to help employees build a shared vision, since the same codification is used and misunderstanding in staff communications may be avoided. The architecture of the system is formed from a set of agent communities each community of practice (CoP). The agents can learn from previous experience and share their knowledge with other agents or communities in a group of multi-agent system (MAS). This paper also described on the theoretical concept and approach of (MAS) technology framework that could be implemented (SMP) in order to facilitate knowledge sharing among the maintainers as well as to demonstrate it into the system wise, on how the (MAS) technology could be utilized in (SMP) system model for serving the maintainer that is developed by using groupware such as Lotus Notes software. This paper applied the definition of (ISO 9241-11, 1998) that examines effectiveness, efficiency, and satisfaction. The emphasis will be given to (SMP) activities that may concern with (MAS) technology that to help the maintainers in order to work collaboratively including critical success factor ensuring that SMP initiatives would be delivered competitive advantage for the (CoP) as well as users of the organization

MASK-SM : multi-agent system based knowledge management system to support knowledge sharing of software maintenance knowledge environment.

Knowledge management (KM) has become an important topic as organizations wish to take advantage of the information that they produce and that can be brought to bear on present decisions. This paper described a system to manage the information and knowledge generated during the software maintenance process (SMP). Knowledge Management System (KMS) is utilizing to help employees build a shared vision, since the same codification is used and misunderstanding in staff communications may be avoided. The architecture of the system is formed from a set of agent communities each community of practice(CoP) is in charge of managing a specific type of knowledge. The agents can learn from previous experience and share their knowledge with other agents or communities in a group of multi-agent system (MAS). This paper also described on the theoretical concept and approach of multi-agent technology framework that could be implemented software maintenance process (SMP) in order to facilitate knowledge sharing among the maintainers of the learning organization. as well as to demonstrate it into the system wise, on how the multi-agent technology could be utilized in the software maintenance process (SMP) system model for serving the maintainer that is developed by using groupware such as Lotus Notes software. This architecture will be named as MASK-SM (MAS Architecture to Facilitate Knowledge Sharing of Software Maintenance). The author followed the Prometheus methodology to design the MAS architecture. This paper applied the definition of ISO 9241-11 (1998) that examines effectiveness, efficiency, and satisfaction. The emphasis will be given to the software maintenance process (SMP) activities that may concern with multi-agent technology to help the maintainers especially in learning organization to work collaboratively including critical success factor in order to ensure that software maintenance process (SMP) initiatives would be delivered competitive advantage for the community of practice(CoP) as well as users of the organization

A model of knowledge management system in managing knowledge of software testing environment

Software testing is the process on how to identify and deliver the software as a product based on the specification that has been given and required by the users. In order to ensure that the product is working based on the user specification, there are many people who are working together for that purposes as a community of practice (CoP). The CoP in software testing environment is including the system designer, programmer, and system tester as well as the user by himself. Based on this scenario of working together or collaboratively in order to avoid a lot of mistake or errors and causes the software failure, which may be found during the processes of software testing process, so that there is a need for CoP to have a tool called knowledge management system (KMS) in managing the knowledge of best practice and lesson learnt. The paper will discuss the concept on how the KMS is offering of its processes through knowledge life cycle which starting from knowledge acquisition, knowledge storing, knowledge dissemination, and knowledge application. Therefore, by using the model of KMS in managing knowledge of software testing, CoP can utilize the knowledge in KMS and it will reduces the mistake or errors, so that they can delivered a good product besides to enhance the quality of software of the particular users

A model of knowledge management system for facilitating knowledge as a service (KaaS) in cloud computing environment

Knowledge as a service (KaaS) is an emerging concept that integrates knowledge management (KM), a knowledge organization, and knowledge markets. KaaS are programs that provide content-based (data, information, knowledge) as organizational outputs (e.g., advice, answers, facilitation), to meet person or external user wants or needs. KaaS are delivered through the knowledge markets as a cloud computing (CC) environment. In ensuring the services will be delivered to the right community of practice (CoP) at the right time in a proper manner, therefore there is a need of a system called knowledge management system (KMS), so that the KaaS can be well managed in a proper form by using the KM life cycle processes. These life cycle processes are including the knowledge acquisition, knowledge storage, knowledge dissemination and knowledge application. This paper presents the concept and its model for facilitating knowledge as a service (KaaS) in a KM system so that CoP can make used the knowledge from service provider as organizational output for their referencing in the context of current best practice and lesson learnt especially related to the CC environment. By using this KMS model, the community who are engaged or connected to the cloud can be easily getting the KaaS as they are wanted or to be considered for the potential purposes in achieving their goal or mission statement

Challenges and Opportunities to Improve Tuberculosis Screening among Immigrant Plantation Workers in Sabah, Malaysia

Tuberculosis (TB) among immigrants has substantial contribution to the TB epidemiology in Sabah. This study aimed to determine the yield of screening for TB disease among immigrant plantation workers in Sabah, Malaysia. This was a prospective cohort study involving 482 legal immigrant workers aged 18 years and above, consented and available at study sites during the study period. Workers with previous history of TB or currently on TB treatment were excluded from participation. Symptom based questionnaire was administered along with both chest radiograph and sputum samples collection for symptomatics participants. Out of 482 plantation workers creened, there was no case of active TB detected among the 44 (9.1%) symptomatics participants. Finding of low TB yield in this study was rather unexpected but this indicates the real challenges for the local health authority to come out with more cost effective screening programs, including reducing stigma, in active TB screening among migrant population