Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Cloud ecosystems'

It is an emerging phenomenon that the leading multinational companies are studying how to use the engagement experiences of customers and communities as the foundation of value co-creation. To achieve this, the business leaders have increasingly adopted an ecological organizational form, namely business ecosystem. Google, Amazon and Microsoft are the real world examples and pioneers in this field. However, in the academic research, it is addressed by a number of researchers that there is significant lack of empirical studies that examines the emergence and formation of business ecosystem, especially in ICT industry. In essence, this study takes Cloud as the context to develop concepts on the emergence of business ecosystem and examine the manifestation of such evolution in the emerging business field. Through extensive literature reviews and empirical interviews, the current study developed answers to the research question, “How do new business ecosystems emerge, in the context of Cloud computing?” at qualitative level. In general, it is considered in the study that business ecosystem is a type of more advanced business form emerged recently. It has the characteristics as follow: provision of value, integration with external partners, requiring multiple participants, shifting from individual to collaborative thinking, interdependence of the participants, value co-creation, co-petition, open innovation and shared fate of success or failure. From a macro level viewpoint, the emergence of business ecosystem is the result of the continuous evolution of business forms, from linear type towards a more complex networked type. At a micro level, for an ecosystem to emerge in a given industry, it involves strategic design and appropriate execution. Furthermore, a set of critical elements need to be in the right place for a business ecosystem to emerge, which including: prerequisite conditions for ecosystem to emerge, external environmental and resource, shared vision, leadership of the ecosystem, common platform, mechanisms of the ecosystem, ecosystem healthiness, and IT infrastructure. The study further suggests that the emergence of business ecosystem as a new business form is not out of luck or probability. It is a natural path that under governance of the evolution forces existing in the social-economic contexts, just as the evolution of all the living creatures in the natural environment. For this broader perspective, the emergence of ecosystem is inevitable due to the social-economic and technological driving forces.

Cloud application development platforms facilitate new models of software co-development and forge environments best characterised as cloud service ecosystems. The value of those ecosystems increases exponentially with the addition of more users and third-party services. Growth however breeds complexity and puts reliability at risk, requiring all stakeholders to exercise control over changes in the ecosystem that may affect them. This is a challenge of governance. From the viewpoint of the ecosystem coordinator, governance is about preventing negative ripple effects from new software added to the platform. From the viewpoint of third-party developers and end-users, governance is about ensuring that the cloud services they consume or deliver comply with requirements on a continuous basis. To facilitate different forms of governance in a cloud service ecosystem we need governance support systems that achieve separation of concerns between the roles of policy provider, governed resource provider and policy evaluator. This calls for better modularisation of the governance support system architecture, decoupling governance policies from policy evaluation engines and governed resources. It also calls for an improved approach to policy engineering with increased automation and efficient exchange of governance policies and related data between ecosystem partners. The thesis supported by this research is that governance support systems that satisfy such requirements are both feasible and useful to develop through a framework that integrates Semantic Web technologies and Linked Data principles. The PROBE framework presented in this dissertation comprises four components: (1) a governance ontology serving as shared ecosystem vocabulary for policies and resources; (2) a method for the definition of governance policies; (3) a method for sharing descriptions of governed resources between ecosystem partners; (4) a method for evaluating governance policies against descriptions of governed ecosystem resources. The feasibility and usefulness of PROBE are demonstrated with the help of an industrial case study on cloud service ecosystem governance.

Energy has been emerged as a first-class computing resource in modern systems. The trend has primarily led to the strong focus on reducing the energy consumption of data centers, coupled with the growing awareness of the adverse impact on the environment due to data centers. This has led to a strong focus on energy management for server class systems. In this work, we intend to address the energy-aware service provisioning in P2P-assisted cloud ecosystems, leveraging economics-inspired mechanisms. Toward this goal, we addressed a number of challenges. To frame an energy aware service provisioning mechanism in the P2P-assisted cloud, first, we need to compare the energy consumption of each individual service in P2P-cloud and data centers. However, in the procedure of decreasing the energy consumption of cloud services, we may be trapped with the performance violation. Therefore, we need to formulate a performance aware energy analysis metric, conceptualized across the service provisioning stack. We leverage this metric to derive energy analysis framework. Then, we sketch a framework to analyze the energy effectiveness in P2P-cloud and data center platforms to choose the right service platform, according to the performance and energy characteristics. This framework maps energy from the hardware oblivious, top level to the particular hardware setting in the bottom layer of the stack. Afterwards, we introduce an economics-inspired mechanism to increase the energy effectiveness in the P2P-assisted cloud platform as well as moving toward a greener ICT for ICT for a greener ecosystem.
La energía se ha convertido en un recurso de computación de primera clase en los sistemas modernos. La tendencia ha dado lugar principalmente a un fuerte enfoque hacia la reducción del consumo de energía de los centros de datos, así como una creciente conciencia sobre los efectos ambientales negativos, producidos por los centros de datos. Esto ha llevado a un fuerte enfoque en la gestión de energía de los sistemas de tipo servidor. En este trabajo, se pretende hacer frente a la provisión de servicios de bajo consumo energético en los ecosistemas de la nube asistida por P2P, haciendo uso de mecanismos basados en economía. Con este objetivo, hemos abordado una serie de desafíos. Para instrumentar un mecanismo de servicio de aprovisionamiento de energía consciente en la nube asistida por P2P, en primer lugar, tenemos que comparar el consumo energético de cada servicio en la nube P2P y en los centros de datos. Sin embargo, en el procedimiento de disminuir el consumo de energía de los servicios en la nube, podemos quedar atrapados en el incumplimiento del rendimiento. Por lo tanto, tenemos que formular una métrica, sobre el rendimiento energético, a través de la pila de servicio de aprovisionamiento. Nos aprovechamos de esta métrica para derivar un marco de análisis de energía. Luego, se esboza un marco para analizar la eficacia energética en la nube asistida por P2P y en la plataforma de centros de datos para elegir la plataforma de servicios adecuada, de acuerdo con las características de rendimiento y energía. Este marco mapea la energía desde el alto nivel independiente del hardware a la configuración de hardware particular en la capa inferior de la pila. Posteriormente, se introduce un mecanismo basado en economía para aumentar la eficacia energética en la plataforma en la nube asistida por P2P, así como avanzar hacia unas TIC más verdes, para las TIC en un ecosistema más verde.

Within the last five years, the market of cloud computing has shown rapid growth. However, despite the increasing popularity, researchers highlight numerous concerns regarding limited interoperability of systems hosted by different cloud providers as well as restricted customization of cloud solutions. In order to counter aforemen-tioned challenges, this study investigates the idea of introducing a marketplace for cloud services that leverage the service-oriented architecture (SOA) paradigm and of-fers software solutions, computing capabilities from cloud providers, components developed by third parties, as well as access to integration and audit services. The goal of the study lies in conceptualizing the idea and the evaluation of demand it may raise from the key cloud actors. In this regard, existing frameworks of cloud compu-ting and SOA contributed to the development of an initial model that was further improved through the interviewing process. The results of this study include a capa-bility-based framework for the cloud marketplace which not only clarifies the role and activities of the different actors but also contains the necessary features of the marketplace that are needed to ensure the proper workflow. In addition to that, the actors’ incentives and concerns regarding the marketplace were analyzed by applying SWOT-analysis. While the analysis revealed both positive interest and present de-mand among the actors, the identified weaknesses and threats highlight the need for further investigations in order to put the idea into practice.

Most existing security enhancements lack a widely-agreed definition of trust. Trusted Cloud models have been proposed, which establish a Root-of-Trust inside the cloud and vouch for the trustworthiness of the cloud services. However, these are often impractical and ineffective due to the cloud's characteristics of complexity, heterogeneity, and dynamism. This dissertation thus focuses on how to effective manage the trust dynamics inside the cloud, and how to export trust to achieve practical cloud attestations. Firstly, a Separation-of-Powers (SoP) model is designed. It separates the authorities of a Cloud Service Provider, and allows different independent roles to participate in managing trust inside the cloud. The collaborative-restrictive relationship among these roles encourages a trustworthy and open cloud ecosystem. Secondly, three core components for implementing this model are designed, solving the problems of: how to effectively determine a Cloud Trusted Computing Base (cTCB) for a cloud application; how to define a Cloud Root-of-Trust (cRoT) for managing the trust evidence for this cTCB; and how to construct a Cloud Chain-of-Trust (cCoT) from the cRoT to export the trust evidence, and achieve cloud application attestations. Thirdly, simulators and prototypes are implemented to evaluate these core components. A Trusted MapReduce (TMR) system is also built as a case study to demonstrate how to utilize the trust services achieved by the SoP model. This dissertation demonstrates that, by correctly managing trust inside the cloud, the genuine behaviours of the cloud can be effectively inspected and verified. The SoP model builds trust from customers to the Cloud Services Providers. Trustworthiness supports security-critical cloud applications, which encourages a wider range of cloud users. Openness further brings a flourishing market to the ecosystem. It encourages many more diverse Cloud Service Providers to equally participate in the cloud ecosystem, regardless of their scale or capabilities. We believe that a model of this kind is important for achieving trustworthy governance in the cloud ecosystem. It could in turn help to promote a wider cloud model adoption.

Remotely sensing recent growth, herbivory, or disturbance of herbaceous and woody vegetation in dryland ecosystems requires high spatial resolution and multi-temporal depth. Three dimensional (3D) remote sensing technologies like lidar, and techniques like structure from motion (SfM) photogrammetry, each have strengths and weaknesses at detecting vegetation volume and extent, given the instrument's ground sample distance and ease of acquisition. Yet, a combination of platforms and techniques might provide solutions that overcome the weakness of a single platform. To explore the potential for combining platforms, we compared detection bias amongst two 3D remote sensing techniques (lidar and SfM) using three different platforms [ground-based, small unmanned aerial systems (sUAS), and manned aircraft]. We found aerial lidar to be more accurate for characterizing the bare earth (ground) in dense herbaceous vegetation than either terrestrial lidar or aerial SfM photogrammetry. Conversely, the manned aerial lidar did not detect grass and fine woody vegetation while the terrestrial lidar and high resolution near-distance (ground and sUAS) SfM photogrammetry detected these and were accurate. UAS SfM photogrammetry at lower spatial resolution under-estimated maximum heights in grass and shrubs. UAS and handheld SfM photogrammetry in near-distance high resolution collections had similar accuracy to terrestrial lidar for vegetation, but difficulty at measuring bare earth elevation beneath dense herbaceous cover. Combining point cloud data and derivatives (i.e., meshes and rasters) from two or more platforms allowed for more accurate measurement of herbaceous and woody vegetation (height and canopy cover) than any single technique alone. Availability and costs of manned aircraft lidar collection preclude high frequency repeatability but this is less limiting for terrestrial lidar, sUAS and handheld SfM. The post-processing of SfM photogrammetry data became the limiting factor at larger spatial scale and temporal repetition. Despite the utility of sUAS and handheld SfM for monitoring vegetation phenology and structure, their spatial extents are small relative to manned aircraft.

This work shares purpose with new directions in the philosophy of intellectual property, where self-expression and participation in the creation of culture are seen as key ingredients of human wellbeingand autonomy. A technical solution is explored that enables major labels and independent creatorsto publish music with equal reach to audiences, without the need for trusted third parties.The principal contribution is a buyer-seller protocol in the setting of untrusted service providersand a blockchain ledger. In the envisioned scenario, files are streamed from untrusted providers toend users. Encryption and watermarking, rather than obfuscation, are used to protect against anddisincentivize piracy. Watermarking bit rate, storage and communication overheads, and encryptionperformance are key parameters. Subscription and ad-supported pricing models are discussed.
Detta arbete delar syfte med nya idéer inom immaterialrättsfilosofi, där yttrande och delaktighet iskapandet av kultur ses som nödvändiga ingredienser för mänskligt välbefinnande och självständighet.Rapporten utforskar en teknisk lösning som möjliggör för stora mediebolag och oberoende artister attpublicera musik med samma åtkomst till publik, utan behov av betrodda tredjeparter.Det huvudsakliga bidraget är ett köpar-säljar-protokoll för en miljö med obetrodda service providersoch en blockchain ledger. I det föreställda sceneriot skickas filer från obetrodda parter till slutan-vändare. Kryptering och vattenmärkning, snarare än obfuskering, används för att skydda mot ochavskräcka från piratkopiering. Vattenmärkningens bithastighet, lagrings- och kommunikations-behov,samt krypteringens prestanda är avgörande parametrar. Subscription och ad-supported som prismod-eller diskuteras.

This master thesis deals with the analysis of the possibilities of Cloud Computing for information system solutions in small and medium businesses. The main objective is to analyze these options, identify key areas for the transition to the cloud and propose an approach to develop Information system in this direction. The main contribution of this work is the practical experience which is involved in a view of the problems being solved and an emphasis on aspects that have been verified in practices. The main text of the work is divided into five chapters. The first chapter defines the basic concepts and limitations on which further work is based. The second chapter deals with the current form of IS in SMEs, its description and identifying problems. The third chapter analyzes the Cloud Computing from the perspective of the suitability of various models for SMEs, identifies the major trends that affect the Cloud Computing and describes some basic elements on which Cloud Computing is based. It also analyzes the issue of security. The fourth chapter deals with the state of Cloud Computing market and identification of key problem areas which need to be solved in various stages of market development. The last chapter uses several case studies to show a meaningfulness and readiness of Cloud Computing for running information system. In the end the recommended approach to the adoption of cloud services is defined.

Over the years, information technology has created opportunities to improve and extend businesses and to start conducting business in new ways. With the evolution of IT, all businesses and industries are becoming increasingly digitized. This process, or coevolution, of IT and business coming together is called digital transformation. One of the recent trends in this digital transformation is the use of application programmable interfaces (APIs). APIs are standardized digital communication interfaces, used for communication and exchange of information between systems, services and devices (such as computers, smartphones and connected machines). API communication is one of the foundational building blocks in recent disruptive technology trends such as mobile and cloud computing. The purpose of this study is to gain an understanding of the business impact that is created in digital transformation related to the use of APIs. To investigate this novel area, an exploratory study is performed where a frame of reference with an exploratory framework is created based on established academic literature. The exploratory framework consists of three main parts which cover the research questions, including Business Drivers, Business Model Change & Innovation and Challenges & Limitations related to API-enabled digital transformation. The framework is used to gather empirical data consisting of two types, interviews (primary data) and contemporary reports (secondary data). Interviews are performed with API-utilizing companies, consulting firms and IT solution providers and contemporary reports are published by consulting and technology research and advisory firms. Two main business drivers are identified in the study. The first is Understanding & Satisfying Customer Needs which is derived from companies experiencing stronger and changing demands for automated, personalized value-adding services. This requires higher degree of integration across channels and organizations. The second driver is Business Agility, which derives from higher requirements on adapting to changing environments while maintaining operational efficiency. Cost Reduction is also mentioned as a third and secondary driver, as a positive side-effect in combination with the other drivers. The identified impact on business models is that business model innovation is mostly happening in the front-end of business model towards customers. Several examples also exist of purely API-enabled businesses that sell services or manage information exchanges over APIs. The challenges and limitations identified are mostly classic challenges of using IT in businesses and not specific to use of APIs, where the general consensus is that IT and business need to become more integrated, and that strategy and governance for API-initiatives need to be established.

abstract: With the increasing user demand for low latency, elastic provisioning of computing resources coupled with ubiquitous and on-demand access to real-time data, cloud computing has emerged as a popular computing paradigm to meet growing user demands. However, with the introduction and rising use of wear- able technology and evolving uses of smart-phones, the concept of Internet of Things (IoT) has become a prevailing notion in the currently growing technology industry. Cisco Inc. has projected a data creation of approximately 403 Zetabytes (ZB) by 2018. The combination of bringing benign devices and connecting them to the web has resulted in exploding service and data aggregation requirements, thus requiring a new and innovative computing platform. This platform should have the capability to provide robust real-time data analytics and resource provisioning to clients, such as IoT users, on-demand. Such a computation model would need to function at the edge-of-the-network, forming a bridge between the large cloud data centers and the distributed connected devices. This research expands on the notion of bringing computational power to the edge- of-the-network, and then integrating it with the cloud computing paradigm whilst providing services to diverse IoT-based applications. This expansion is achieved through the establishment of a new computing model that serves as a platform for IoT-based devices to communicate with services in real-time. We name this paradigm as Gateway-Oriented Reconfigurable Ecosystem (GORE) computing. Finally, this thesis proposes and discusses the development of a policy management framework for accommodating our proposed computational paradigm. The policy framework is designed to serve both the hosted applications and the GORE paradigm by enabling them to function more efficiently. The goal of the framework is to ensure uninterrupted communication and service delivery between users and their applications.
Dissertation/Thesis
Masters Thesis Computer Science 2015

Today, it is a major issue for mobile applications to maintain a replica state of the server on mobile devices. This creates the need to keep data on both the server and the mobile. In such cases, when the data changes on the server, the new state of the data has to be updated on the mobile in order to maintain a consistent view of the data flow. However, mobile devices communicate over wireless mediums (.e.g., Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, 3.5G/4G, etc.) which can experience intermittent connectivity. The volatility of the network is also influenced by low-bandwidth. The direct effects of these issues are high latency and inconsistency issues between the data on the mobile clients and the remote servers. In this work, I present a detail review on the topic of data synchronization in mobile networks. Then, a generic architecture called MobiQ is proposed which can keep working in an offline mode to record local modifications and can synchronize with the remote servers when connectivity is restored. This is achieved through the proposal of an efficient synchronization protocol which combines different synchronization and replication strategies. Moreover, the MobiQ framework provides a secured environment to work with data. The implemented architecture is designed and tested in mobile questionnaire system and the result is encouraging.

碩士
國立交通大學
管理學院經營管理學程
101
The enterprise internal unique utilization resource，its superiority may by way of the financial norm observation understanding ， the enterprise between the understanding itself competitive advantages and financial indicator whether can continue the superior development。Using the DuPont identity inferential reasoning financial indicator，the enterprise competitive advantage factor foundation in the asset、supplier relationship 、 and customer management as well as the knowledge management four abilities，with 146 listed enterprises is the object of study，the research time point takes the financial storm (A.D. 2008) as the dividing line，divides the earlier period and later。This research result, the cloud computing industry in big data ecosystem can be separable three strategy clusters，later period are more than 5 enterprises the earlier period，in 5 has 4 to occupy for 75% as "clouds service strategy cluster"，one enterprise is occupy for 25% as " clouds equipment conformity strategy cluster"。Big data ecosystem vigorous development leads "cloud" the user platform and information analysis processing and "end" the operation processing demand and opportunity，the well-known facilitator and manufacturer such as Facebook 、PEGATRON and other new competitors enter。using the distribution analysis knew that the clouds industry assumes the stable growth distribution development，its cloud computing industry prospect will look good。

碩士
國立臺灣科技大學
科技管理所
101
Cloud computing is one of the hottest issue in the current information technology. Nowadays, all the enterprises including governmental organizations, academic research institutes and technological industries, pay more and more attention in the development of cloud computing. The IT industry in Taiwan is well-developed, while cloud computing comes into wear, many IT software venders begin to invent in cloud application software. However, even though the Government supports the cloud industry, and many software venders have invented in many cloud applications, the development of cloud market in Taiwan remains slow. Therefore, this research focus on finding the difference between the development of SaaS BI and Cloud BI in the United States and Taiwan. SaaS BI and Cloud BI are the cloud products of Strategy Companion, a Taiwan origin BI company. While SaaS BI is well-developed in the United States, Cloud BI is still in a developing stage in Taiwan. In this paper, we start from investigating the strategy of core product to know the business model of the company. Then discover the difference of business ecosystem between two countries from the perspective of the business ecosystem theory. Last, we show the importance of the complementary assets in promoting a new technical product in the market, and emphasize that all the roles in promoting a new product is indispensable. By doing this, this research hope to provide a real help for software venders who want to develop the cloud application in the future.

abstract: The Dhofar Cloud Forest is one of the most diverse ecosystems on the Arabian Peninsula. As part of the South Arabian Cloud Forest that extends from southern Oman to Yemen, the cloud forest is an important center of endemism and provides valuable ecosystem services to those living in the region. There have been various claims made about the health of the cloud forest and its surrounding region, the most prominent of which are: 1) variability of the Indian Summer Monsoon threatens long-term vegetation health, and 2) human encroachment is causing deforestation and land degradation. This dissertation uses three independent studies to test these claims and bring new insight about the biodiversity of the cloud forest. Evidence is presented that shows that the vegetation dynamics of the cloud forest are resilient to most of the variability in the monsoon. Much of the biodiversity in the cloud forest is dominated by a few species with high abundance and a moderate number of species at low abundance. The characteristic tree species include Anogeissus dhofarica and Commiphora spp. These species tend to dominate the forested regions of the study area. Grasslands are dominated by species associated with overgrazing (Calotropis procera and Solanum incanum). Analysis from a land cover study conducted between 1988 and 2013 shows that deforestation has occurred to approximately 8% of the study area and decreased vegetation fractions are found throughout the region. Areas around the city of Salalah, located close to the cloud forest, show widespread degradation in the 21st century based on an NDVI time series analysis. It is concluded that humans are the primary driver of environmental change. Much of this change is tied to national policies and development priorities implemented after the Dhofar War in the 1970’s.
Dissertation/Thesis
Doctoral Dissertation Geography 2015