Jean-Henry Morin

Towards Cloud Computing SLA Risk Management: Issues and Challenges

Cloud Computing has become mainstream technology offering a commoditized approach to software, platform and infrastructure as a service over the Internet on a global scale. This raises important new security issues beyond traditional perimeter based approaches. This paper attempts to identify these issues and their corresponding challenges, proposing to use risk and Service Level Agreement (SLA) management as the basis for a service level framework to improve governance, risk and compliance in cloud computing environments.

HyperNews: a MEDIA application for the commercialization of an electronic newspaper

MEDIA is a platform that allows the commercialization and dissemination of electronic documents under similar conditions as printed documents using an agent-based, distributed and secure platform. Documents in the MEDIA system are encapsulated within agents which the reader must execute in order to access their contents. The developed pilot application of MEDIA is HyperNews, a commercial electronic newspaper environment allowing its readers to buy articles from different information providers (electronic newspaper publishers) and compose their own personalized newspaper.

SLA data management criteria

Service Level Agreements (SLAs) represent service management contracts that are processed by monitoring and measurement mechanisms for the evaluation of the signatories adherence to the agreed service levels during service execution. The paper discusses SLA data management characteristics that need to be considered in the design of data models for SLA documents. The SLA anatomy is introduced with respect to the Web Service Level Agreement (WSLA) [1] language specification. Furthermore, the paper highlights current obstacles for the integration of automated SLA management in the cloud business setting. The contributed SLA data analysis maps SLA terms to data management attributes according to their operational relevance during the SLA activity. We present an SLA digraph model for the automated SLA formulation and data handling. The SLA digraph is introduced as a programming module that sits on the application layer and communicates with backend data stores for the SLA persistence.

Toward Internet of Things Application Markets

The application marketplaces in the smart phone ecosystem are fostering open innovation by incentivizing developers to create software applications. These application marketplaces play the role of unified channels for distribution of third party innovation artifacts such as software applications. Although the vision of the Internet of Things has existed over a decade, the distribution channels for third party applications are still at an early stage of development. In this paper we draw an analogy between the smart phone application marketplaces and the existing similar trends in the Internet of Things. We present a review of Internet of Things application platforms with an attempt to identify the common ground for the creation of Internet of Things application marketplaces. Based on the observations from the review we identify the general trends followed by the Internet of Things platforms and propose a general design intended to shape the realization of application marketplaces fostering open innovation for Internet of Things.

Trading digital intangible goods: the rules of the game

The authors first specify the terms and conditions for the commercialization of intangible goods, and particularly digital documents, defining a mapping between the commercialization terms of the tangible goods (printed information) to the commercialization terms of the intangible goods (digital document). The meaning and limits of purchasing, accessing, redistributing, copying, preserving user anonymity, etc., are defined in accordance with the well established rules governing the trade of printed information. We next specify the requirements that a digital commercialization system of intangible goods should fulfill in order to guarantee the rights of its users (providers and consumers) like user anonymity, superdistribution, marketing policies, etc. Finally we give a brief presentation of a framework and a pilot application that we designed and implemented for the commercialization of digital documents.

Issues for the Commercial Distribution of Electronic Documents

This paper examines the issues surrounding the charging for the use of electronic documents. While traditional systems charge for the release of the document, we have adopted the approach of distributing intelligent documents (agents) that can initiate the billing procedure when the user wishes to view the document. We first present the requirements that should be met by a system responsible for the sale of electronic documents, followed by a presentation of our approach for meeting these requirements. Finally, we discuss how this mechanism will be used in the construction of the HyperNews system for the sale of electronic newspapers.

A SLA graph model for data services

Cloud computing has given rise to on-demand service provisioning and massive outsourcing of IT infrastructures and applications to virtual, commoditized ones. Despite the broad Service Level Agreement (SLA) usage in scientific settings, their role in cloud markets is peripheral and misinterpreted. The paper introduces a SLA graph data model that supports automated SLA formalization and data management through a property digraph. The data model is described as a directed graph (digraph). We elaborate on node and edge properties that indicate dependencies in the SLA data management flow. We sketch a realistic scenario of cloud data service provisioning to extract attributes that characterize the data service. The SLA graph model and data service attributes are used to demonstrate the formalization of a SLA template that is managed as a property graph. The graph structure enables the manipulation of SLA information in a modular, extensible way that considers the data flow and all inclusive data dependencies.

Commercialization of electronic information

Information dissemination is slowly moving from printed media to electronic media. However, this step cannot be completed if the electronic commercialization of information does not provide the same guarantees against copyright infringement as with the printed media. We present the major requirement for the commercialization of electronic information and describe Hep, an agent based framework we developed for the commercialization of arbitrary electronic documents over open networks.

Agent-based commercial dissemination of electronic information

Information dissemination is slowly moving from printed media to electronic media. However this step cannot be completed if the electronic commercialization of information does not provide the same guarantees against copyright infringement as the printed media. In this paper we present the major requirement for the commercialization of electronic information and describe Hypermedia Electronic Publishing (HEP), an agent-based framework we developed for the commercialization of arbitrary electronic documents.

Controlling the dissemination of electronic documents

The wide use of data networks encourages the exchange of electronic documents. However, this practice often has unwanted side-effects such as unauthorised copying, redistribution or modification of these documents. Moreover, the recipient usually has no convenient means of confirming the authenticity of the document, while the sender has no proof of receipt. In this paper we present the major requirements for the commercialisation of electronic information and describe an agent-based framework for the exchange of arbitrary electronic documents over open networks.