Marinela Mircea

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.

SOA, BPM and Cloud Computing: Connected for innovation in higher education

Globalization, financial crisis, requirements of the students from the XXI century and other factors are leading to pressure on universities in terms of ensuring appropriate IT (Information Technology) supports necessary for educational and research/development activities. Using an integrated approach based on SOA (Service-Oriented Architecture), BPM (Business Process Management) and Cloud Computing may be a solution to obtain the agility and quick access to technology, with the achievement of savings at institution level. In addition, the solution may offer new opportunities to improve practices and attain innovation. This paper provides an approach on how to use the mix of SOA, BPM and Cloud Computing in higher education, focusing on the implementation need and benefits. It also presents the current state of Romanian universities regarding the implementation of integrated solutions based on the latest technologies.

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.

Heuristic Attempts to Improve the Generalization Capacities in Learning SVMs

The paper reports some new variants of gradient ascent type in learning SVMs. The theoretical development is presented in the third section of the paper. The performance analysis of the proposed variants, in terms of recognition accuracy and generalization capacity, is experimentally evaluated and the results are presented and commented in the final part of the paper.

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.

Service-Oriented Enterprise: Taking the Next Step beyond Agility in the Digital Economy

In the digital economy, every enterprise has the tendency of becoming an intelligent enterprise and, through the means of innovational information technology solutions, of gaining competition advantage on the market. At the same time, management and service-oriented technology and principles caught the attention of researchers with the purpose of finding new methods to increase the enterprise agility. At present there are some problems regarding the transition to service-oriented architecture and the management of service-oriented enterprise. The study analyses the impact of service-oriented architecture on enterprise and some aspects regarding agile architecture for the service-oriented enterprise as an important factor in the economic development of enterprises within the knowledge-based society.

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.

GA-based attempts to improve the recognition rate and generalization capacity of the nonlinear soft margin support vector machines

The aim of the paper is to report a new method based on genetic computation of designing a nonlinear soft margin SVM yielding to significant improvements in discriminating between two classes. The design of the SVM is performed in a supervised way, in general the samples coming from the classes being nonlinearly separable. The experimental analysis was performed on artificially generated data as well as on Ripley and MONKs datasets reported in the fourth section of the paper. The tests proved real improvements of both the recognition rate and generalization capacities without significantly increasing the computational complexity.