Zaigham Mahmood

Data Location and Security Issues in Cloud Computing

Cloud Computing is a generic term for delivering hosted services over the Internet. It follows a pay-as-you-go approach. Cloud Computing offers numerous benefits for the enterprises, however, there are also many issues, as with any new paradigm or technology. One of the main issues relate to the security and confidentiality of customer data in terms of its location, relocation, availability and security. This paper outlines the Cloud benefits, briefly explains the delivery and deployment models and discusses in detail the issues relating to data in the Cloud. The aim is to provide some useful background information for organizations preparing to migrate to the Cloud to take advantage of this latest computing paradigm.

Cloud Computing for Enterprise Architectures

This important text provides a single point of reference for state-of-the-art cloud computing design and implementation techniques. The book examines cloud computing from the perspective of enterprise architecture, asking the question; how do we realize new business potential with our existing enterprises? Topics and features: with a Foreword by Thomas Erl; contains contributions from an international selection of preeminent experts; presents the state-of-the-art in enterprise architecture approaches with respect to cloud computing models, frameworks, technologies, and applications; discusses potential research directions, and technologies to facilitate the realization of emerging business models through enterprise architecture approaches; provides relevant theoretical frameworks, and the latest empirical research findings.

Cloud Computing: Characteristics and Deployment Approaches

Cloud Computing is a generic term for anything that involves delivering hosted services over the Internet. It is a new paradigm based on a pay-as-you-go approach. Whereas, many large enterprises have embraced the cloud technologies and infrastructures, numerous vendors have developed application, platform and infrastructure services for other organizations to consume. This paper introduces the Cloud Computing concepts, explores the benefits it promises, discusses the inherent issues and challenges and explains, in some detail, the deployment and delivery models for Cloud Computing. The aim is to provide some general information for enterprises wishing to integrate their existing IT processes and systems with Cloud services and infrastructures, which are readily available for their consumption.

Software Engineering Frameworks for the Cloud Computing Paradigm

This book presents the latest research on Software Engineering Frameworks for the Cloud Computing Paradigm, drawn from an international selection of researchers and practitioners. The book offers both a discussion of relevant software engineering approaches and practical guidance on enterprise-wide software deployment in the cloud environment, together with real-world case studies. Features: presents the state of the art in software engineering approaches for developing cloud-suitable applications; discusses the impact of the cloud computing paradigm on software engineering; offers guidance and best practices for students and practitioners; examines the stages of the software development lifecycle, with a focus on the requirements engineering and testing of cloud-based applications; reviews the efficiency and performance of cloud-based applications; explores feature-driven and cloud-aided software design; provides relevant theoretical frameworks, practical approaches and future research directions.

A Review of Incentive Mechanism in Peer-to-Peer Systems

Free riders in the Peer-to-Peer (P2P) networks are nodes that only consume services but provide little or nothing in return. They seriously degrade the fault-tolerance, scalability and content availability of the P2P systems. The solution to free riding problem in P2P networks is to have incentive mechanisms that aim to improve the network utility by influencing the nodes to be more cooperative. This paper proposes five design requirements that an incentive mechanism should satisfy and suggests that the existing incentive mechanisms can be classified into three categories: Monetary-based, Fixed contribution and Reciprocity-based schemes. The paper outlines the principles, provides typical examples and applications and discusses limitations of these schemes. The applicability of each scheme is also discussed against the proposed deign requirements. The aim is to provide an overview and guidance to enhance the applicability of incentive mechanisms in P2P systems.

Cloud Computing for Enterprise Architectures: Concepts, Principles and Approaches

Cloud Computing is the latest paradigm that involves delivering hosted services over the Internet, based on a pay-as-you-go approach. It allows for provision of a variety of business and customer services. Consumers, especially the business organizations, can extend their existing computing provision and easily scale up Information Technology (IT) facilities by consuming services available in the Cloud. There are generally three varieties of services, namely, Software as a Service (SaaS), Platform as a Service (PaaS) and Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), and four types of deployment approaches, viz., Private Clouds, Public Clouds, Community Clouds and Hybrid Clouds. Enterprises, who have implemented appropriate Enterprise Architectures (EA), can scale up their ‘technical architectures’ by integrating the existing infrastructure with the PaaS and IaaS provisions. Similarly, they can extend ‘information and application architectures’ by utilizing the PaaS and SaaS offerings. Thus, Cloud Computing can provide a useful extension to existing EAs, on demand and without the additional capital investment. This chapter discusses the Cloud and EA concepts, principles, technologies, deployment approaches and associated frameworks. It provides a basic overview and sets the background for the rest of the chapters in this book.

Human Factors in Software Development and Design

Computer programs and processes that take into account the goals and needs of the user meet with the greatest success, so it behooves software engineers to consider the human element inherent in every line of code they write.Human Factors in Software Development and Design brings together high quality research on the influence and impact of ordinary people on the software industry. With the goal of improving the quality and usability of computer technologies, this premier reference is intended for students and practitioners of software engineering as well as researchers, educators, and interested laymen.

Developing E-Government Projects: Frameworks and Methodologies

Zaigham Mahmood is a researcher and author. He has an M.Sc. in Mathematics, M.Sc. in Computer Science, and Ph.D. in Modelling of Phase Equilibria. Dr Mahmood is a Senior Technology Consultant at Debesis Education UK, a researcher at the University of Derby UK, and Professor Extraordinaire at the North West University in South Africa. He is, currently, also a Foreign Professor at NUST Islamabad Pakistan. Professor Mahmood has published over 100 articles in international journals and conference proceedings in addition to four books on cloud computing and two reference texts on e-government: E-Government Implementation and Practice in Developing Countries and Developing E-Government Projects: Frameworks and Methodologies. He is also the Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of E-Government Studies and Best Practices and Series Editor-in-Chief of the IGI book series on Advances in Electronic Government, Digital Divide & Regional Development (AEGDDRD). Professor Mahmood is an active researcher; he also serves as editorial board member of several journals, books and conferences; guest editor for journal special issues; organiser and chair of conference tracks and workshops; and keynote speaker at conferences. His research interests encompass subject areas including e-government studies, project management, software engineering, enterprise computing and cloud computing. Released: June 2013 An Excellent Addition to Your Library!

IT in the Public Sphere: Applications in Administration, Government, Politics, and Planning

Zaigham Mahmood is a researcher and author. He has an M.Sc. in Mathematics, M.Sc. in Computer Science, and Ph.D. in Modelling of Phase Equilibria. Dr Mahmood is a Senior Technology Consultant at Debesis Education UK, a researcher at the University of Derby UK, and Professor Extraordinaire at the North West University in South Africa. He is, currently, also a Foreign Professor at NUST Islamabad Pakistan. Professor Mahmood has published over 100 articles in international journals and conference proceedings in addition to four books on cloud computing and two reference texts on e-government: E-Government Implementation and Practice in Developing Countries and Developing E-Government Projects: Frameworks and Methodologies. He is also the Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of E-Government Studies and Best Practices and Series Editor-in-Chief of the IGI book series on Advances in Electronic Government, Digital Divide & Regional Development (AEGDDRD). Professor Mahmood is an active researcher; he also serves as editorial board member of several journals, books and conferences; guest editor for journal special issues; organiser and chair of conference tracks and workshops; and keynote speaker at conferences. His research interests encompass subject areas including e-government studies, project management, software engineering, enterprise computing and cloud computing. Released: November 2013 An Excellent Addition to Your Library!

Continued Rise of the Cloud

Graphics processing unit (GPU)-based clouds are gaining momentum, and GPU computing resources are starting to be offered as a cloud service, either as parallel computing power or accessible as a part of a leased virtual machine (VM). For this reason, the GPU cloud is one of the most promising cloud evolutions. However, the present cloud offerings do not effectively exploit GPU computing resources, which could well improve the performance and security of distributed computing systems. In fact, heterogeneous many-core hardware and especially GPUs, offer a potentially massive increase in computing power. They are also very power efficient, enabling significant price/performance improvements over traditional central processing units (CPUs). Unfortunately, and more importantly, GPU clouds do not guarantee an adequate level of security with respect to access control and isolation. There is no effective control on how parallel code (a.k.a. kernels) is actually executed on a GPU. In fact, the present GPU device drivers are entirely based on proprietary code and are optimized for performance rather than security. As a result, GPU architectures and hardware (HW)/software (SW) implementations are not yet considered to be mature enough for a GPU cloud. In particular, the level of security offered by this novel approach has yet to be fully investigated, as there is a limited securityrelated research that specifically targets GPU architectures. This chapter describes how GPU-as-a-Service can be exposed to misuse and to potential denial of service (DoS) and information leakage. It also shows how GPUs can be used as a security and integrity monitoring tool by the cloud, for instance, to provide timely integrity checking of VM code and data, allowing scalable management of the security of complex cloud computing infrastructures. Some further relevant security concerns are discussed in this chapter, including GPU service availability, access transparency and control.