Marian Stoica

Agile Collaborative Architecture for the Development of E-Government Services in Romania: Electronic Public Procurement Case Study

When speaking about electronic government, Romania is giving a special attention to relations between government and organizations. The main reason is the fact that private organizations are the driving force of economic growth. On the other hand, are two principles of public procurement: more attention to transparency and efficient use of public funds. SEAP (Public Procurement Electronic System) as G2B eGovernment solution was gradually developed starting 2002, offering numerous benefits. Still, it does not solve all the problems and challenges of the procurement process. This chapter offers a general view of the current state of the public procurement in Romanian organizations, highlighting the strengths and weaknesses of SEAP. Also, we present solutions for improvement of public procurement process, both from legislative and technological perspective. Special attention is given to a performant collaborative system that helps solve challenges of procurement, both on national and international level. Modern approaches like: Service Oriented Architecture, Business Intelligence, Business Rules, Business Process Management, Cloud Computing and others are used to create an agile architecture for development of G2B e-procurement services.

Using Cloud Computing to Address Challenges Raised by the Internet of Things

The growing number of connected smart devices and the expansion of data storage capacities and data analytics make the fabric of the global interconnection of the manifold universe of human existence. On top of that, the premise of this type of global network of technology infrastructure enables the development of efficient and dynamic enterprise services. The Internet of Things (IoT) interconnects real-world objects through a large variety of technologies, devices, and protocols. Besides its benefits, the IoT is faced with problems and challenges related to scalability, interoperability, reliability, efficiency, availability, storage, and security (known as the Big 7 of IoT), which experts try to overcome with various solutions. This chapter addresses one of the solutions, namely, Cloud Computing. It dwells on the seven challenges in IoT and the extent to which Cloud Computing can address them (the Big 7 of IoT). It is an analytic approach that focuses on the new paradigms emerging from coupling Cloud and IoT together, which has resulted in the Cloud of Things or CloudIoT.

QAaaS in a Cloud IoT Ecosystem

The current transition state of the global society, both from economic and (mostly) technological perspective, goes – again – into overtime. Borrowed from fundamental domains and applied into science and research, the latest technological developments are built on graphene, silicene, phosphorene and stanene. The fourth industrial revolution changes perceptions and redefines the status of the individual, transforming him from con-sumer into pro-sumer of energy. Spintronics stimulates the production of accessories specific to the Internet of Things (IoT), like smart clothes connected to internet and implanted phones. Additionally, technology influences software development methodologies facing us with paradigms that transcend philosophies like green, grid, cloud computing and advance toward a superior manifestation of computer programming: Fog Computing (with the next level being presumably Rainbow Computing). Within this avalanche of transformations, technologies and paradigms, one aspect that has to evolve continuously is the quality assurance (QA). Hidden under various concept or methodology encapsulations, quality assurance in all fields and mostly in technological development and software paradigm play a key role. In an ecosystem defined by the context of Cloud IoT, quality assurance as service becomes a real challenge. In this paper we highlight the ways the ecosystem engages in its development not only things, beings, energies, sensors or objects but also technologies. One such popular technology is cloud computing which, in the context of IoT, sees a spectacular development of its own cluster of services, a potential such service being QAaaS.