Anca Ioana Andreescu

Using Cloud Computing in Higher Education: A Strategy to Improve Agility in the Current Financial Crisis

In the current financial crisis and being challenged by growing needs, universities are facing problems in providing necessary information technology (IT) support for educational, research and development activities. The objective of this paper is to find alternatives to the use of IT, while leading universities to improve agility and obtain savings. The research methodology consisted in a rigorous analysis of the latest research on Cloud Computing as an alternative to IT provision, management and security. It also took into account the best practices for Cloud Computing usage within universities, plus the authors’ experience in IT and higher education. The article begins with a brief introduction to Cloud Computing in universities, referring to the most important results obtained so far. Further, a starting point for universities to use Cloud Computing is provided, by proposing an adoption strategy. The strategy includes five stages, with emphasis on the evaluation of data and processes/functions/applications from several major universities based on some key criteria, while creating a correspondence between these aspects and the models/services/applications that exist on the Cloud market. The results obtained are encouraging and support the use of Cloud solutions in universities by improving knowledge in this field and providing a practical guide adaptable to the university’s structure. In order to be applicable in practice, the proposed model takes into account the university’s architecture and criteria such as mission, availability and importance of applications and also the data’s mission, sensitivity, confidentiality, integrity and availability.

Combining actual trends in software systems for business management

This paper presents, at a conceptual level, the fist stage of the authors research in the field of software systems for business management. It is an attempt to define the connection between Master Data Management, Service Oriented Architectures and Complex event Processing in creating an agile infrastructure, types of master data integration and management solutions. It also outlines the minimum stages needed for the development of a Master Data Management system.

A general software development process suitable for explicit manipulation of business rules

This paper points out the necessity and also the real possibilities to introduce facilities for business rules manipulation into the software systems development process. At the methodological level, through the proposed general process, it is offered an alternative to business rules approaches, aiming mainly at software systems for small and medium organizations or systems that do not explicitly require the use of a rules engine.

A Roadmap towards Service-Oriented Enterprise

In the current economic context, enterprises are struggling to obtain competitive advantages on the market, by exploiting the opportunities offered by information technology. The research in this paper aims to encourage the use of modern approaches in order to increase enterprise agility, through the transition to Service-Oriented Enterprise (SOE). The proposed solution is based on reaching a superior level of maturity of Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) within the organization. SOE integrates the latest technologies with service-oriented business processes within an approach which requires the creation of an agile architecture and also major changes at organizational level. Structured in two main parts, the paper first highlights the SOA maturity levels in organization according to several factors, as well as the knowledge of the impact and the changes arising from SOA adoption. In addition, an architectural model for service-oriented enterprise is proposed, based on up-to-date technologies like SOA, Cloud Computing, Business Process Management and Case Management. This model is intended to facilitate the interoperability between business partners as well as the alignment of information technology strategy and business strategy, and ultimately to increase enterprise agility.

A design of an integrated document system for project management

The paper describes a design model for an integrated document system for project management, which takes into account the key requirement of ensuring consistent and high-quality project management documentation. The model is based on structured documents which rely on a static model of project management-relevant entities.