Bakgrund: Dagens snabbföränderliga värld och höga konkurrenstryck ställer krav på innovativa investeringar för en verksamhets fortskridning. Nytt paradigm inom IT-branschen är molntjänst, där utbjudande leverantör bör ta hänsyn till vissa faktorer för att erhålla ett gynnsamt utfall. Vanligt förekommande inom IT-branschen är att nyttja Business Case i beslutssituationer där olika faktorer noga övervägs innan investeringsbeslut fattas. Syfte: Studiens syfte är att med hjälp av Business Case identifiera och belysa avgörande faktorer och riskkällor vid investeringsbeslut. De identifierade riskkällorna ska också undersökas i syfte att söka minimera dem. Med hjälp av teoretisk och empiriskt underlag ämnar studien sammanställa ett Business Case för säkrare investeringsbeslut vid multidimensionella IT-investeringar. Metodik: Detta är en fallstudie utifrån en kvalitativ forskningsmetod. Studien är uppbyggd kring semi-strukturerade intervjuer, där tre representanter ifrån fallföretaget IST låtit svara på djupgående intervjufrågor. Slutsats: Samtliga faktorer som granskats har mer eller mindre betydande roll för beslutstagande vid multidimensionell IT-investering. De faktorer som anses ha störst betydelse vid ett investeringsbeslut är också de faktorer som utgör störst risk. Dessa är marknadsbehov IT-branschen och tekniska förutsättningar vilka besvarar kandidatuppsatsens frågeställningar. Med Business Case som utgångspunkt reduceras osäkerheter och säkrare investeringsbeslut möjliggörs. / Background: In today’s rapidly changing society, the high competitive pressures require innovative investments in order for companies to proceed. A new paradigm within the IT-industry is Cloud service, where the vendor needs to take into account certain factors to obtain a favourable outcome. Therefore, it is common to use Business Case in the IT-industry during the decision making process where different factors are carefully considered before deciding whether or not to make an investment. Purpose:  By using Business Case, the aim of this study is to identify and highlight the critical factors and sources of risk when making an investment-decision. The identified hazards should also be explored in order to seek to minimize them. With the help of theoretical and empirical data the study intends to compile a Business Case for safer investment for multidimensional IT-investments. Methodology:  In this study qualitative research has been used. The study is based on semi-structured interviews, where three representatives from IST have been asked to answer essential interview questions. Conclusion: All factors examined in this study were more or less of a significant role in the decision making process of a multidimensional IT-investment. However, the most important factors when making a decision are also the factors that constitute the greatest risk. These are the market needs in the IT industry and technological conditions, which respond to the questions asked in this particular thesis. Using the Business Case as a starting point, uncertainties are reduced and the possibilities of a safer investment decisions are improved.

Network virtualization is becoming a fundamental building block of future Internet architectures. By adding networking resources into the “cloud”, it is possible for users to rent virtual routers from the underlying network infrastructure, connect them with virtual channels to form a virtual network, and tailor the virtual network (e.g., load application-specific networking protocols, libraries and software stacks on to the virtual routers) to carry out a specific task. In addition, network virtualization technology allows such special-purpose virtual networks to co-exist on the same set of network infrastructure without interfering with each other. Although the underlying network resources needed to support virtualized networks are rapidly becoming available, constructing a virtual network from the ground up and using the network is a challenging and labor-intensive task, one best left to experts. To tackle this problem, we introduce the concept of a HyperNet, a pre-built, pre-configured network package that a user can easily deploy or access a virtual network to carry out a specific task (e.g., multicast video conferencing). HyperNets package together the network topology configuration, software, and network services needed to create and deploy a custom virtual network. Users download HyperNets from HyperNet repositories and then “run” them on virtualized network infrastructure much like users download and run virtual appliances on a virtual machine. To support the HyperNet abstraction, we created a Network Hypervisor service that provides a set of APIs that can be called to create a virtual network with certain characteristics. To evaluate the HyperNet architecture, we implemented several example Hyper-Nets and ran them on our prototype implementation of the Network Hypervisor. Our experiments show that the Hypervisor API can be used to compose almost any special-purpose network – networks capable of carrying out functions that the current Internet does not provide. Moreover, the design of our HyperNet architecture is highly extensible, enabling developers to write high-level libraries (using the Network Hypervisor APIs) to achieve complicated tasks.