Risk and Compliance Management for Cloud Computing Services: Designing a Reference Model

More and more companies are making use of Cloud Computing Services in order to reduce costs and to increase theflexibility of their IT infrastructures. Currently, the focus is shifting towards problems of risk and compliance which includeas well the realm of Cloud Computing security. For instance, since the storage locations of data may shift or remain unknownto the user, the problem of the applicable jurisdiction arises and impede the adoption and management of Cloud ComputingServices. Therefore, companies need new methods to avoid being fined for compliance violations, to manage risk factors aswell as to manage processes and decision rights. This paper presents a reference model that serves to support companies inmanaging and reducing risk and compliance efforts. We developed the model on the solid basis of a systematic literaturereview and practical requirements by analyzing Cloud Computing Service offers

Panel: Why do we toil? Benefiting research at the cost of practice or vice versa?

In this paper, we present a systematic literature review in the field of IT Outsourcing with a focus on risk management. The source material of the review consists of 97 high quality journal articles published in 18 journals between 2001 and September 2008. Besides an analysis of related work, this review provides an overview of applied research methods and theories in the field of IT Outsourcing. The articles are then analyzed from a risk management point of view to highlight key risk factors and their specific impact on IT Outsourcing. Identified risk factors are further analyzed in order to assign each risk factor to the phases of a typical IT Outsourcing process (life-cycle). The results of the review show that empirical research is the most applied method and that action research and reference modelling have not been used at all so far. Furthermore, elements of a research agenda are discussed in order to determine further steps to the construction of a reference model for risk management in IT Outsourcing. This paper mainly aims at an audience of experienced researchers in the field of IT Outsourcing who are looking for research ideas and at junior scientists (e.g. PhD students) entering this emerging field of research

To issue of ensuring of competitiveness of domestic turbogenerators

Рассмотрены направления проведения работ по совершенствованию конструкций отечественных турбогенераторов с целью сохранения их конкурентоспособности на мировом рынке за счет использования современных достижений в области крупного электромашиностроения, в частности, путем замены в крупных турбогенераторах водородного охлаждения на воздушное и совершенствования конструктивных элементов.Areas of work on improving the design of domestic turbogenerators are considered to retain their competitiveness in the global market through the use of the latest achievements in the field of large electric machines. This can be achieved by replacing the cooling by hydrogen on the air cooled in large turbogenerators and improvement of the structural elements

Excitonic Stark effect in MoS2_2 monolayers

We theoretically investigate excitons in MoS$_2$ monolayers in an applied in-plane electric field. Tight-binding and Bethe-Salpeter equation calculations predict a quadratic Stark shift, of the order of a few meV for fields of 10 V/$\mu$m, in the linear absorption spectra. The spectral weight of the main exciton peaks decreases by a few percent with an increasing electric field due to the exciton field ionization into free carriers as reflected in the exciton wave functions. Subpicosecond exciton decay lifetimes at fields of a few tens of V/$\mu$m could be utilized in solar energy harvesting and photodetection. We find simple scaling relations of the exciton binding, radius, and oscillator strength with the dielectric environment and an electric field, which provides a path to engineering the MoS$_2$ electro-optical response.Comment: 9 pages, 7 figure

Understanding the Cloud Computing Ecosystem: Results from a Quantitative Content Analysis

An increasing number of companies make use of CloudComputing services in order to reduce costs and increaseflexibility of their IT infrastructure. This has enlivened a debateon the benefits and risks of Cloud Computing, among bothpractitioners and researchers. This study applies quantitativecontent analysis to explore the Cloud Computing ecosystem. Theanalyzed data comprises high quality research articles andpractitioner-oriented articles from magazines and web sites. Weapply n-grams and the cluster algorithm k-means to analyze theliterature. The contribution of this paper is twofold: First, itidentifies the key terms and topics that are part of the CloudComputing ecosystem which we aggregated to a comprehensivemodel. Second, this paper discloses the sentiments of key topicsas reflected in articles from both practice and academia

Wirtinger gradient descent methods for low-dose Poisson phase retrieval

The problem of phase retrieval has many applications in the field of optical imaging. Motivated by imaging experiments with biological specimens, we primarily consider the setting of low-dose illumination where Poisson noise plays the dominant role. In this paper, we discuss gradient descent algorithms based on different loss functions adapted to data affected by Poisson noise, in particular in the low-dose regime. Starting from the maximum log-likelihood function for the Poisson distribution, we investigate different regularizations and approximations of the problem to design an algorithm that meets the requirements that are faced in applications. In the course of this, we focus on low-count measurements. For all suggested loss functions, we study the convergence of the respective gradient descent algorithms to stationary points and find constant step sizes that guarantee descent of the loss in each iteration. Numerical experiments in the low-dose regime are performed to corroborate the theoretical observations

DESIGN AND IMPLEMENTATION OF A COMMUNITY PLATFORM FOR THE EVALUATION AND SELECTION OF CLOUD COMPUTING SERVICES: A MARKET ANALYSIS

The large number of available Cloud Computing Services makes it hard for companies to keep an overview of the market and to identify the services that best fit their needs. Also, the search for the most suitable Cloud Computing Services often takes too much time and money. The community platform presented in this article was designed to assist companies and users in solving this problem by enabling them to identify relevant Cloud Computing Services. Furthermore, users have the option of evaluating individual services and get access to the evaluations submitted to the community platform by other users. The paper describes the design and the prototypical implementation of the platform and introduces a maturity model for the quality assessment of Cloud Computing Services listed in the platform’s underlying database. The authors also provide recommendations for further action based on a first analysis of the market situation. Our research can be characterized as a design-oriented research approach that focuses on the design of IT artifacts (i.e. community platform and underlying maturity model). Both IT artifacts are evaluated by means of expert interviews and by users giving us feedback when testing our community platform

Elements of Proximal Formative Assessment in Learners’ Discourse about Energy

Proximal formative assessment, the just-in-time elicitation of students\u27 ideas that informs ongoing instruction, is usually associated with the instructor in a formal classroom setting. However, the elicitation, assessment, and subsequent instruction that characterize proximal formative assessment are also seen in discourse among peers. We present a case in which secondary teachers in a professional development course at SPU are discussing energy flow in refrigerators. In this episode, a peer is invited to share her thinking (elicitation). Her idea that refrigerators move heat from a relatively cold compartment to a hotter environment is inappropriately judged as incorrect (assessment). The instruction (peer explanation) that follows is based on the second law of thermodynamics, and acts as corrective rather than collaborative