Stephen J. Cohen

A Decision Framework for Cloud Computing

Cloud computing technology is garnering success and wisdom-like stories of savings, ease of use, and increased flexibility in controlling how resources are used at any given time to deliver computing capability. This paper develops a preliminary decision framework to assist managers who are determining which cloud solution matches their specific requirements and evaluating the numerous commercial claims (in many cases unsubstantiated) of a clouds value. This decision framework and research helps managers allocate investments and assess cloud alternatives that now compete with in-house data centers that previously stored, accessed, and processed data or with another companys (outsourced) data center resources. The hypothetically newly captured corporate value (from cloud) is that resources are no longer idle most of the time, and are now much more fully utilized (with lower unit costs). This reduces high ownership and support costs, improves capital leverage, and delivers increased flexibility in the use of resources.

Improving Integration and Insight in Smart Cities with Policy and Trust

This paper examines the issues of policy and trust in the context of IT infrastructures for Smart Cities. This paper proposes that trusted Smart city policies can lead to the development of trusted foundational service underlying all smart city solutions. Such a set services are critical for architectural choices of data integration and use within smart city domains, and will lead to the development of a marketplace where service providers and consumers engage in a free and fully informed exchange to choose worthy and reliable experiences to address everything from reporting street light outage to identifying economic advantages during city planning. It argues that two usually mutually exclusive architectural meta-models; Centralization and Federation, are required to achieve a set of trusted foundational services. It reviews the large array of options for implementing the marketplace component of the foundational services to support scenarios varying from fully isolated well known analytics to the anonymous access that allows potential users to browse for services without any controls. It concludes that Trusted Policies are highly important as successful ingredients in the development of foundational services and the following developmental stage, and in the operations and maintenance stages for integrated Smart city systems. It is critical that Smart cities systems implement city-wide policies that improve and sustain trust that in turn help Smart cities manage across the multitude of systems that are in both developmental and operational stages simultaneously, and will be so for many decades to come.

Establishing Smart City Technical Standards and Guidance: A Way Forward

Solving technical problems with complex systems and integrating the many technologies employed in these multifaceted structures has been a recurring theme in Smart Cities research. This paper presents an analysis of the reason this problem has been so well explored but persists with no solution widely available. The problem is viewed as a combination of Smart City needs, governance, and increasingly technically difficult decisions. The paper describes the requirements that must be met to develop a framework that can address this seeming intractable and expanding integration concern, identifies the governance processes that can be used to address this problem, and to manage integration in Smart Cities, The solution proposed is a formalized accepted and managed technology regulated environment introduced by governance groups composed of city planners/managers, citizen, stake holders, and technology delivery organizations. The solution requirements dictate the establishment of a standard that would guide the development and usage of automated, autonomous components, integrating dynamically with software agents. All of this working to rapidly optimize shared resources through error handling processes executing largely at no cost except those of processing time, meeting safety guidelines, satisfying operational monitoring needs, and meeting post issue liability guidelines. This technical standard would obligate developers and vendors to meet safety standards and accept liability for malfeasance. As initiating steps, Smart City managers must come together and establish a basic understanding of the goals and regulations, and the methodologies for implementing them.

Data Systems Fault Coping for Real-time Big Data Analytics Required Architectural Crucibles

This paper analyzes the properties and characteristics of unknown and unexpected faults introduced into information systems while processing Big Data in real-time. The authors hypothesize that there are new faults, and requirements for fault handling and propose an analytic model and architectural framework to assess and manage the faults and mitigate the risks of correlating or integrating otherwise uncorrelated Big Data, and to ensure the source pedigree, quality, set integrity, freshness, and validity of data being consumed. We argue that new architectures, methods, and tools for handling and analyzing Big Data systems functioning in real-time must design systems that address and mitigate concerns for faults resulting from real-time streaming processes while ensuring that variables such as synchronization, redundancy, and latency are addressed. This paper concludes that with improved designs, real-time Big Data systems may continuously deliver the value and benefits of streaming Big Data.