Hyper Converged Infrastructures: Beyond virtualization

Hyper Convergence has brought virtualization and IT strategies to a new level. Datacenters are undergoing a deep paradigm shift from a hardware-centric to an application-centric approach which leverages on software defined architectures, while IT is more and more being delivered as services rather than assets or products. Throughout different evolving phases since the initial attempts to convergence, the concept has been refined down to a level where,ultimately, a whole datacenter could be fully managed from a centralized single point, abstracting the whole hardware layer and exposing it to the administrators as a transparent pool of resources. This paper analyzes the evolution of infrastructures and tries to dig into the reality and convenience of Hyper Convergence

Project Success in Agile Development Projects

The paper explains and clarifies the differences between Waterfall and Agile development methodologies, establishes what criteria could be taken into account to properly define project success within the scope of software development projects, and finally tries to clarify if project success is the reason why many organizations are moving to Agile methodologies from other ones such as Waterfall. In the form of a literature review, it analyses several, publications, investigations and case studies that point out the motives why companies moved to Agile, as well as the results they observed afterward. It also analyses overall statistics of project outcomes after companies evolved from traditional methodologies such as Waterfall to Agile development approaches

Assessing the impact of political economy factors on rules of origin under NAFTA

Rules of origin are legitimate policy instruments to prevent trade deflection in a preferential trade agreement short of a customs union. Trade deflection takes place when a product imported into the preferential trade agreement through the member with the lowest external tariff is transhipped to a higher-tariff member, while yielding a benefit for the re-exporter. Yet, when captured by special interest groups, rules of origin can restrict trade beyond what is needed to prevent trade deflection. By how much do political economy factors account for the stringency of rules of origin? This study quantifies the impact of both determinants - those considered"justifiable"because they prevent trade deflection and those deemed to arise from"political economy"forces - on the restrictiveness of rules of origin under the North American Free Trade Agreement, approximated by a restrictiveness index. The main finding is that political economy forces, especially from the United States, raised significantly the restrictiveness of the rules of origin. Indeed, in industries where political-economy forces were strong prior to the North American Free Trade Agreement, as when the U.S. Most Favored Nation tariff was high or the revealed comparative advantage of Mexico (the United States) was strong (weak), more stringent rules of origin were introduced. Thus, stricter rules of origin are associated with higher production costs reducing the potential benefits of enhanced market access that is initially pursued by this type of agreement.Free Trade,Economic Theory&Research,Trade Policy,Trade Law,Debt Markets

Export performance and trade facilitation reform : hard and soft infrastructure

The authors estimate the impact of aggregate indicators of"soft"and"hard"infrastructure on the export performance of developing countries. They build four new indicators for 101 countries over the period 2004-07. Estimates show that trade facilitation reforms do improve the export performance of developing countries. This is particularly true with investment in physical infrastructure and regulatory reform to improve the business environment. Moreover, the findings provide evidence that the marginal effect of infrastructure improvement on exports appears to be decreasing in per capita income. In contrast, the impact of information and communications technology on exports appears increasingly important for richer countries. Drawing on estimates, the authors compute illustrative exports growth for developing countries and ad-valorem equivalents of improving each indicator halfway to the level of the top performer in the region. As an example, improving the quality of physical infrastructure so that Egypt's indicator increases half-way to the level of Tunisia would increase exports by 10.8 percent. This is equivalent to a 7.4 percent cut in tariffs faced by Egyptian exporters across importing markets.Environmental Economics&Policies,Transport Economics Policy&Planning,Free Trade,Economic Theory&Research,Trade Policy

Turismo rural en el ANP insurgente Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla: impactos y estrategias para la conservación ambiental

La dinámica actual del modelo de desarrollo económico, precisa el conocimiento sobre la disponibilidad recursos naturales, como soporte fundamental de los procesos productivos, pero también la sujeción de las estructuras socio políticas vinculadas directamente con su posesión y aprovechamiento, con la finalidad de dar continuidad a los mecanismos de acumulación del capital.El trabajo tuvo como objetivo analizar los impactos socio territoriales que el turismo genera en el área natural protegida (ANP) Insurgente Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla (México) con la finalidad de proponer estrategias que propicien la conservación ambiental. Para ello, se retomó la comunalidad como marco de análisis sobre los impactos que genera en el territorio, recursos, estructura política, dinámica económica y elementos culturales. Se identificó que la actividad tiene incidencia sobre los elementos biofísicos y las dinámicas socio políticas, ante lo cual es preciso delinear estrategias de conservación ambiental que den continuidad de los servicios ecosistémicos y permitan mejorar las condiciones de vida de la población.PRODEP - Universidad Autónoma del Estado de Méxic

El pensamiento social en la propuesta de la pedagogía del oprimido de Paulo Freire

consideraron cinco aspectos que son el resultado del análisis a las categorías, estos tienen que ver fundamentalmente con el proceso emancipatorio, la comunión docente-discente, la acción comunicativa, la concepción del amor, la concientización como proceso de aprendizaje, la perspectiva humanista en el aula y la pedagogía crítica.La presente investigación tuvo como objetivo analizar transversalmente las categorías referentes al paradigma de la obra “pedagogía del oprimido” de Paulo Freire, éstas fueron: sujeto, concientización, libertad y alfabetización, dicho análisis se desarrolló utilizando como herramienta metodológica a la hermenéutica crítica de Paul Ricoeur; se distinguieron tres fases de estudio: pretexto, contexto y texto que se complementaron con un análisis de tipo transversal y a partir de este se desarrolló un trabajo argumentativo de las categorías que se analizaron mediante la siguiente dinámica: Identificación de las tesis centrales de cada una de las obras de Freire, génesis de la construcción de las categorías, profundidad en cada categoría y análisis transversal

Why trade facilitation matters to Africa ?

This paper reviews data and research on trade costs for Sub-Saharan African countries. It focuses on: border-related costs, transport costs, costs related to behind-the border issues, and the costs of compliance with rules of origin specific to preferential trade agreements. Trade costs are, on average, higher for African countries than for other developing countries. Using gravity-model estimates, the authors compute ad-valorem equivalents of improvements in trade indicators for a sample of African countries. The evidence suggests that the gains for African exporters from improving the trade logistics half-way to the level in South Africa is more important than a substantive cut in tariff barriers. As an example, improving logistics in Ethiopia half-way to the level in South Africa would be roughly equivalent to a 7.5 percent cut in tariffs faced by Ethiopian exporters.Transport Economics Policy&Planning,Free Trade,Economic Theory&Research,Environmental Economics&Policies,Trade Policy

Rules of origin for preferential trading arrangements : implications for the ASEAN Free Trade Area of EU and U.S. experience

With free trade areas (FTAs) undernegotiation between Japan and the ASEAN Free Trade Area (AFTA) members and between the Republic of Korea and AFTA members, preferential market access will become more important in Asian regionalism. Protectionist pressures will likely increase through rules of origin, the natural outlet for these pressures. Based on the experience of the European Union and the United States with rules of origin, the authors argue that, should these FTAs follow in the footsteps of the EU and the U.S. and adopt similar rules of origin, trading partners in the region would incur unnecessary costs. Using EU trade under the Generalized System of Preferences with Africa, Caribbean, and Pacific partners, the authors estimate how the use of preferences would likely change if AFTA were to veer away from its current uniform rules of origin requiring a 40 percent local content rate. Depending on the sample used, a 10 percentage point reduction in the local value content requirement is estimated to increase the utilization rate of preferences by between 2.5 and 8.2 percentage points.Free Trade,Rules of Origin,Trade and Regional Integration,Economic Theory&Research,Trade Policy