Cloud technology requires a virtualized ubiquitous and scalable environment with shared resources. The general problem in cloud adoption is the absence of standardization across organizations. A standardized approach remained elusive since the inception of the Cloud First mandate. The purpose of this study was to explore leader-initiated change management (LICM) practices in cloud adoption within organizations. The theoretical framework included the classical theories of Kurt Lewin's organization change management, leader-member exchange, intentional change, and appreciative inquiry. A multiple case study design approach facilitated the exploration of LICM-value added practices to identify standardization in cloud adoption practices. Data collection included semistructured interviews from 8 high-level cloud adopters chosen from a resource pool of change management experts including a government chief information officer, academic college professor, military commander, and industry chief executive officer. Each interviewee represented an organization type providing perspectives on strategies for cloud adoption. Secondary data gathering included universal cloud standards and guidance from collaborative professional working groups. Emergent themes were identified after completing Yin's 5 stages of data analysis: LICM approaches for cloud decision-making, change management strategies, leader empowerment in action planning with progressive metrics, and successful learning outcomes in corporate universities. LICM strategies foster cooperative relationships and positive social change. Standardized cloud adoption practices also contribute to positive social change in reducing the environmental footprint through organizational efficiency.

I takt med att världen blir alltmer uppkopplad och digitaliserad, är det en ständig utmaning för lagstiftningen att hänga med i utvecklingen. Digitaliseringen har också öppnat upp en helt ny arena för brottslighet, där elektroniska enheter och information har blivit alltmer centrala. För att bekämpa den ökande brottsligheten i den digitala sfären, har det funnits ett behov av att säkra digitalt bevismaterial som lagras utanför den fysiska enheten. Tidigare kunde det vara svårt att komma åt dessa digitala bevis på ett effektivt och lagligt sätt. Den nya lagen om genomsökning på distans har öppnat upp för möjligheten att säkra digitalt bevismaterial även utanför den lokala enheten. Syftet med uppsatsen var att undersöka hur lagen har påverkat det IT-forensiska arbetet, samt kartlägga möjligheter och utmaningar som lagen medför. Därutöver lyfter arbetet även fram önskemål på förändringar i lagen ur ett IT-forensiskt perspektiv. Detta undersöktes med hjälp av en kvalitativ studie där det utfördes intervjuer med IT-forensiker på Polismyndigheten och en verksamhetsutvecklare på NFC. / As the world becomes increasingly connected and digitized, it is a constant challenge for legislation to keep up with the pace of the technical development. Digitalization has also established an entirely new arena for criminal activity, where electronic devices and information have become increasingly central. To combat the increasing digital crime, there has been a need to secure digital evidence stored outside of the physical device. Previously, it could be difficult to access this digital evidence in an effective and legal manner. The new law on cloud forensic investigation has enabled the probability of securing digital evidence even outside of the local device. The purpose of this essay was to examine how the law has affected the IT-forensic investigation work, as well as to identify the opportunities and challenges posed by the law. In addition, the work highlights requests for changes to the law from an IT forensic perspective. This was investigated using a qualitative study where interviews were conducted with IT-forensic experts from Polismyndigheten and a developer from NFC.

During these last recent years cloud computing and cloud services have started to gain traction, which has been most notable among companies. Amazon have proven to be one of the powerhouses on providing scalable and flexible cloud computing services. However, cloud computing is still a relatively new area. From an outsider’s point of view, the overwhelming information and available services might prove to be difficult to familiarize with. The aim of this thesis is to explore how Amazon Web Services can be applied during software development and observing how difficult it might be to use these services. Three test applications that utilized different Amazon Web Services were implemented to get an insight into how Amazon Web Services can be applied from a cloud computing beginner’s point of view. These applications were developed in an iterative manner, where a case study was performed on each application. At the start of each new iteration a literature study was conducted, where sources were reviewed to see if it provided essential information. In total, nine different Amazon Web Services were used to implement and test the three respective test applications. Results of the case study were interpreted and evaluated with regards to the learnability and appliance of Amazon Web Services. Issues that were identified during the development process showed that Amazon Web Services were not userfriendly for users that have little to no experience with cloud computing services. Further research on other Amazon Web Services, such as Elastic Cloud Computing, as well as other cloud computing platforms like Google or IBM, may provide a deeper and more accurate insight on the appliances of cloud computing. / Under dem senaste åren så har molntjänster blivit ett allt mer populärt område, speciellt inom företag. Ett av dem största utgivare inom molntjänst branschen är Amazon som erbjuder skalbara och flexibla molntjänster. Molntjänster är dock ett relativt nytt område, vilket innebär att någon som inte är insatt i ämnet kan finna all tillgänglig information överväldigande och svår att bekanta sig med. Målet med det här tesen är att utforska olika Amazon Web Service som kan användas inom mjukvaruutveckling och observera problem som kan uppstå med dessa tjänster. Tre testapplikationer som använde sig av Amazon Web Services var skapade för att få en fördjupad kunskap om hur dessa tjänster fungerar och vad för möjligheter de har. Dessa applikationer utvecklades iterativt och en fallstudie utfördes för varje applikation. I början av varje ny iteration genomfördes en litteraturstudie, där källorna var kritiskt granskade för att se ifall dem innehöll väsentlig information för tesen. Sammanlagt användes nio olika Amazon Web Services för att implementera och testa de tre olika testapplikationerna. Resultaten från fallstudien tolkades och utvärderades med avseende på Amazon Web Services lärbarhet och tillämpningsbarhet. Problem som samlades ihop under utvecklingsprocessen visade att Amazons Web Services inte var särskilt användarvänligt för utvecklare med liten eller ingen erfarenhet inom Amazon Web Services. Ytterligare forskning inom andra Amazon Web Services som Elastic Cloud Computing och forskning som undersöker andra molntjänst plattformar som Google Cloud, skulle kunna bidra med en djupare förståelse och mer exakt inblick kring tillämpning av molntjänster.

MLOps and Kubernetes are two major components of the modern-day information technology landscape, and their impact on the field is likely to grow even stronger in the near future. As a multitude of tools have been developed for the purpose of facilitating effortless creation of cloud native MLOps solutions, many of them have been designed, to varying degrees, to integrate with the Kubernetes system. While numerous evaluations have been conducted on these tools from a general MLOps perspective, this thesis aims to evaluate their qualities specifically within a Kubernetes context, with the focus being on their integration into this ecosystem. The evaluation is conducted in two steps: an MLOps market overview study, as well as an in-depth MLOps tool evaluation. The former represents a macroscopic overview of currently available MLOps tooling, whereas the latter delves into the practical aspects of deploying three Kubernetes native, open source MLOps platforms on cloud-based Kubernetes clusters. The platforms are Kubeflow, Pachyderm, and Polyaxon, and these are evaluated in terms of functionality, usability, vitality, and performance.

No description available.

Tesis por compendio / Scientific applications generally require large computational requirements, memory and data management for their execution. Such applications have traditionally used high-performance resources, such as shared memory supercomputers, clusters of PCs with distributed memory, or resources from Grid infrastructures on which the application needs to be adapted to run successfully. In recent years, the advent of virtualization techniques, together with the emergence of Cloud Computing, has caused a major shift in the way these applications are executed. However, the execution management of scientific applications on high performance elastic platforms is not a trivial task. In this doctoral thesis, Elastic Cloud Computing Cluster (EC3) has been developed. EC3 is an open-source tool able to execute high performance scientific applications by creating self-managed cost-efficient virtual hybrid elastic clusters on top of IaaS Clouds. These self-managed clusters have the capability to adapt the size of the cluster, i.e. the number of nodes, to the workload, thus creating the illusion of a real cluster without requiring an investment beyond the actual usage. They can be fully customized and migrated from one provider to another, in an automatically and transparent process for the users and jobs running in the cluster. EC3 can also deploy hybrid clusters across on-premises and public Cloud resources, where on-premises resources are supplemented with public Cloud resources to accelerate the execution process. Different instance types and the use of spot instances combined with on-demand resources are also cluster configurations supported by EC3. Moreover, using spot instances, together with checkpointing techniques, the tool can significantly reduce the total cost of executions while introducing automatic fault tolerance. EC3 is conceived to facilitate the use of virtual clusters to users, that might not have an extensive knowledge about these technologies, but they can benefit from them. Thus, the tool offers two different interfaces for its users, a web interface where EC3 is exposed as a service for non-experienced users and a powerful command line interface. Moreover, this thesis explores the field of light-weight virtualization using containers as an alternative to the traditional virtualization solution based on virtual machines. This study analyzes the suitable scenario for the use of containers and proposes an architecture for the deployment of elastic virtual clusters based on this technology. Finally, to demonstrate the functionality and advantages of the tools developed during this thesis, this document includes several use cases covering different scenarios and fields of knowledge, such as structural analysis of buildings, astrophysics or biodiversity. / Las aplicaciones científicas generalmente precisan grandes requisitos de cómputo, memoria y gestión de datos para su ejecución. Este tipo de aplicaciones tradicionalmente ha empleado recursos de altas prestaciones, como supercomputadores de memoria compartida, clústers de PCs de memoria distribuida, o recursos provenientes de infraestructuras Grid, sobre los que se adaptaba la aplicación para que se ejecutara satisfactoriamente. El auge que han tenido las técnicas de virtualización en los últimos años, propiciando la aparición de la computación en la nube (Cloud Computing), ha provocado un importante cambio en la forma de ejecutar este tipo de aplicaciones. Sin embargo, la gestión de la ejecución de aplicaciones científicas sobre plataformas de computación elásticas de altas prestaciones no es una tarea trivial. En esta tesis doctoral se ha desarrollado Elastic Cloud Computing Cluster (EC3), una herramienta de código abierto capaz de llevar a cabo la ejecución de aplicaciones científicas de altas prestaciones creando para ello clústers virtuales, híbridos y elásticos, autogestionados y eficientes en cuanto a costes, sobre plataformas Cloud de tipo Infraestructura como Servicio (IaaS). Estos clústers autogestionados tienen la capacidad de adaptar su tamaño, es decir, el número de nodos, a la carga de trabajo, creando así la ilusión de un clúster real sin requerir una inversión por encima del uso actual. Además, son completamente configurables y pueden ser migrados de un proveedor a otro de manera automática y transparente a los usuarios y trabajos en ejecución en el cluster. EC3 también permite desplegar clústers híbridos sobre recursos Cloud públicos y privados, donde los recursos privados son complementados con recursos Cloud públicos para acelerar el proceso de ejecución. Otras configuraciones híbridas, como el empleo de diferentes tipos de instancias y el uso de instancias puntuales combinado con instancias bajo demanda son también soportadas por EC3. Además, el uso de instancias puntuales junto con técnicas de checkpointing permite a EC3 reducir significantemente el coste total de las ejecuciones a la vez que proporciona tolerancia a fallos. EC3 está concebido para facilitar el uso de clústers virtuales a los usuarios, que, aunque no tengan un conocimiento extenso sobre este tipo de tecnologías, pueden beneficiarse fácilmente de ellas. Por ello, la herramienta ofrece dos interfaces diferentes a sus usuarios, una interfaz web donde se expone EC3 como servicio para usuarios no experimentados y una potente interfaz de línea de comandos. Además, esta tesis doctoral se adentra en el campo de la virtualización ligera, mediante el uso de contenedores como alternativa a la solución tradicional de virtualización basada en máquinas virtuales. Este estudio analiza el escenario propicio para el uso de contenedores y propone una arquitectura para el despliegue de clusters virtuales elásticos basados en esta tecnología. Finalmente, para demostrar la funcionalidad y ventajas de las herramientas desarrolladas durante esta tesis, esta memoria recoge varios casos de uso que abarcan diferentes escenarios y campos de conocimiento, como estudios estructurales de edificios, astrofísica o biodiversidad. / Les aplicacions científiques generalment precisen grans requisits de còmput, de memòria i de gestió de dades per a la seua execució. Este tipus d'aplicacions tradicionalment hi ha empleat recursos d'altes prestacions, com supercomputadors de memòria compartida, clústers de PCs de memòria distribuïda, o recursos provinents d'infraestructures Grid, sobre els quals s'adaptava l'aplicació perquè s'executara satisfactòriament. L'auge que han tingut les tècniques de virtualitzaciò en els últims anys, propiciant l'aparició de la computació en el núvol (Cloud Computing), ha provocat un important canvi en la forma d'executar este tipus d'aplicacions. No obstant això, la gestió de l'execució d'aplicacions científiques sobre plataformes de computació elàstiques d'altes prestacions no és una tasca trivial. En esta tesi doctoral s'ha desenvolupat Elastic Cloud Computing Cluster (EC3), una ferramenta de codi lliure capaç de dur a terme l'execució d'aplicacions científiques d'altes prestacions creant per a això clústers virtuals, híbrids i elàstics, autogestionats i eficients quant a costos, sobre plataformes Cloud de tipus Infraestructura com a Servici (IaaS). Estos clústers autogestionats tenen la capacitat d'adaptar la seua grandària, es dir, el nombre de nodes, a la càrrega de treball, creant així la il·lusió d'un cluster real sense requerir una inversió per damunt de l'ús actual. A més, són completament configurables i poden ser migrats d'un proveïdor a un altre de forma automàtica i transparent als usuaris i treballs en execució en el cluster. EC3 també permet desplegar clústers híbrids sobre recursos Cloud públics i privats, on els recursos privats són complementats amb recursos Cloud públics per a accelerar el procés d'execució. Altres configuracions híbrides, com l'us de diferents tipus d'instàncies i l'ús d'instàncies puntuals combinat amb instàncies baix demanda són també suportades per EC3. A més, l'ús d'instàncies puntuals junt amb tècniques de checkpointing permet a EC3 reduir significantment el cost total de les execucions al mateix temps que proporciona tolerància a fallades. EC3e stà concebut per a facilitar l'ús de clústers virtuals als usuaris, que, encara que no tinguen un coneixement extensiu sobre este tipus de tecnologies, poden beneficiar-se fàcilment d'elles. Per això, la ferramenta oferix dos interfícies diferents dels seus usuaris, una interfície web on s'exposa EC3 com a servici per a usuaris no experimentats i una potent interfície de línia d'ordres. A més, esta tesi doctoral s'endinsa en el camp de la virtualitzaciò lleugera, per mitjà de l'ús de contenidors com a alternativa a la solució tradicional de virtualitzaciò basada en màquines virtuals. Este estudi analitza l'escenari propici per a l'ús de contenidors i proposa una arquitectura per al desplegament de clusters virtuals elàstics basats en esta tecnologia. Finalment, per a demostrar la funcionalitat i avantatges de les ferramentes desenrotllades durant esta tesi, esta memòria arreplega diversos casos d'ús que comprenen diferents escenaris i camps de coneixement, com a estudis estructurals d'edificis, astrofísica o biodiversitat. / Calatrava Arroyo, A. (2016). High Performance Scientific Computing over Hybrid Cloud Platforms [Tesis doctoral]. Universitat Politècnica de València. https://doi.org/10.4995/Thesis/10251/75265 / Compendio

Call number: LD2668 .T4 1956 M67 / Master of Science

"The cloud" has been a hot subject the last couple of years, and has been considered especially attractive to SMEs due to making it possible for whole information systems to be fully managed by the vendor. This can unburden the customer organization regarding for example large investment costs, hardware and software maintenance, while also adding flexibility and scalability. There are three types of service models: infrastructure, platform and software, which dictate what the customer and vendor manages. In Software-as-a-Service (SaaS), which is the focus of this study, a third part manages both the applications and hardware and the users access these resources through the Internet. However, with the usage of SaaS comes several issues for companies to handle and make use of, for example security and mobility. This master thesis' aim is to present organizational effects of SaaS usage in SME user companies, by studying customer organizations post implementation. A qualitative comparative study was conducted where we held semi-structured interviews with SME users mainly at their own offices. In total six interviews were conducted at five different companies. At least two years usage experience was a criteria we set to ensure we could retrieve enough data from the companies. To fulfill the aim of the study we set out to find common issues affecting SMEs using SaaS systems. Through a pre-study, including literature studies and customer interviews, we determined which of the common issues that could be considered most relevant. Factors taken into consideration was how SaaS specific an issue was and how relevant it is in the post implementation phase, and how much data we were able to retrieve regarding an issue through the interviews. The relevant issues were: price model, vendor relation, frequent updates, mobility and integration. Further, five hypotheses were derived, one for each relevant issue regarding the organizational effects of SaaS usage. An analytical model was constructed mainly based on DeLone and McLean's (1992; 2003) original and updated Information System Success Model. The model helped in deriving organizational effects of usage from the different relevant issues. By using the analytical model with interview and literature study material we came up with the findings of this report, as described below. The possible price models enables companies to be more flexible with their IT portfolio. Also, it was concluded that the costs of SaaS are based upon usage, which could make it harder to estimate, especially if the usage varies. But it can also be a strength enabling customers to scale their usage as needed. In general, the vendor relation between a customer and vendor was not too complex, however with one exception. Our main discovery was that certain factors of SaaS usage affect the degree of experienced vendor lock-in differently. These include the nature of the pricing model, contract binding times and data ownership rights. Further, the level of trust and lock-in level could also affect the customer intention to change system. Frequent updates, which are managed by the vendor, reduce time and effort in regards to maintenance performed by customers. However, sometimes the updates could also cause problems when the customer had own configurations. The mobility offered by SaaS systems extends organizations ability to work. This includes increased geographical freedom for mainly employees of an organization. We found that integration is much more of a general issue for information systems. But in SaaS connection of services are possible and can thus enable further value than each service can on its own. However, integration also causes increased lock-in and system management. / Molnet har var ett hett ämne de senaste åren, och har ansetts vara särskilt attraktivt för SME:s då det möjliggör att hela informationssystem sköts av systemleverantören. Detta avlastar kundorganisationer från stora investeringskostnader och underhåll av hårdvara och mjukvara, genom att samtidigt öka både skalbarheten och flexibiliteten. Det finns tre typer av tjänstetyper: infrastructure, platform och software, vilka avgör vad som leverantören och kunden hanterar. I Software-as-a-Service (SaaS), som är i fokus får denna studie, så hanteras både applikationer och hårdvara av tredje part och användare kan få åtkomst till dessa genom internet. Med SaaS tillkommer dock även vissa svårigheter som företag måste hantera, exempelvis gällande säkerhet och mobilitet. Syftet med examensarbetet var att presentera de organisatoriska effekterna av SaaS-användning för SMEs genom att studera kundorganisationer i postimplementations-fasen. En kvalitativ, jämförande studie genomfördes där vi höll semi-strukturerade intervjuer med SME:s främst på deras egna kontor. Totalt sex stycken intervjuer genomfördes på fem olika företag. Vi krävde åtminstone två års användningserfarenhet för att säkerställa åtkomst till tillräcklig data. För att uppnå syftet med arbetet så började vi med att hitta vanligt förekommande svårigheter (”common issues”) som påverkar SME-användare. Genom en förstudie som innefattade intervjuer, litterära studier och användarintervjuer så kunde vi fastställa vilka av dessa problemområden som var mest relevanta. Faktorer vi tog hänsyn till var hur SaaS-specifikt och relevanta svårigheterna var i postimplementations-fasen, samt hur mycket data vi kunde få ut av våra fallföretag genom intervjuer. De relevanta svårigheterna (”relevant issues”) var: prismodellen, relationen till systemleverantör, frekventa uppdateringar, mobilitet och integration. Dessutom tog vi fram fem hypoteser gällande de organisatoriska effekterna av SaaS-användning baserad på svårigheterna. En analytisk modell skapades huvudsakligen baserad på DeLone och McLeans (1992; 2003) ursprungliga och uppdaterade ”Information System Success Model”. Denna modell underlättade att ta fram organisatoriska effekter av användning för de olika relevanta svårigheterna. Genom användningen av den analytiska modellen tillsammans med intervjuer och litteratur så kom vi fram till resultatet av studien, beskrivet nedan. De möjliga prismodellerna möjliggör för företag att vara mer flexibla med deras IT-portföljer. Dessutom fastställdes det att när kostnaderna för SaaS baseras på användningen kan vara svårt att uppskatta totalkostnaden, särskilt när användningen varierar. Detta kan dock samtidigt vara en styrka då det möjliggör skalbarhet efter behov. Kundrelationen mellan en kund och systemleverantör var inte alltför komplicerad, dock med ett undantag. Vår huvudsakliga upptäckt var att vissa faktorer i SaaS-användning påverkar den upplevda graden av inlåsningseffekter till systemleverantören. Dessa inkluderar prismodellens utformning, bindningstider och äganderättigheter till sin data. Dessutom kunde förtroendet och inlåsningsgraden också påverka kunders avsikt att byta system. Frekventa uppdateringar som hanteras av systemleverantören, minskar både tid och ansträngning för kunden gällande underhåll. Däremot kunde uppdateringarna ibland orsaka problem när kunden hade egna konfigurationer. Mobiliteten som möjliggörs av SaaS-system utökar organisationers arbetsmöjligheter. Detta inkluderar större geografisk frihet för de anställda i en organisation. Vi kom fram till att integration är mer en generell svårighet för informationssystem. Däremot i SaaS så är det möjligt att ansluta olika SaaS-tjänster, vilket kan skapa större mervärde än vad varje tjänst var för sig kan skapa. Däremot kan integration också orsaka ökade inlåsningseffekter och ökat behov av systemunderhåll.

The indirect effect of atmospheric aerosol on climate remains a large source of uncertainty in anthropogenic climate change prediction. An important fraction of this uncertainty arises from the impacts of organic aerosol on cloud droplet formation. Conventional thinking says that organic aerosol hygroscopicity, typically represented by the hygroscopicity parameter κ, increases with oxidation, most commonly represented by the oxygen to carbon ratio of the aerosol, O:C. Furthermore, these quantities are expected to increase as aerosol volatility decreases. Results indicate that the link between organic aerosol hygroscopicity and oxidation is not always straightforward, and in some cases, the average carbon oxidation state OSc appears to be a better indicator of oxidation than the oxygen to carbon ratio, O:C. In chamber and ambient studies, the least volatile fraction of the aerosol also appeared to be the least hygroscopic, contradictory to current thinking; however, in both cases, thermally-denuded aerosol showed greater oxidation, in terms of OSc, than non-denuded aerosol. When these findings are placed in the context of numerous published studies from a variety of different environment, the overall trend of increasing organic hygroscopicity with O:C still holds. This is also true for volatilized aerosol, though the magnitude of organic hygroscopicity is generally lower than that of non-denuded aerosol.

ITC/USA 2010 Conference Proceedings / The Forty-Sixth Annual International Telemetering Conference and Technical Exhibition / October 25-28, 2010 / Town and Country Resort & Convention Center, San Diego, California / The development and analysis cloud is a rapid development system being designed to support the Air Force Research Lab (AFRL) Simulation & Technology Assessment Branch. The purpose is to isolate research, development, test, and evaluation of unique software within a Zone D enclave [1] to allow researchers and analysts to develop and test software free of the many IT requirements that hamper development and without risk of contaminating the overall Air Force network. The cloud system is being designed so researchers and analysts will utilize Software as a Service (SaaS) models. Such a model makes it transparent to users such things as where the software originates and any licensing concerns. Utilities, tools, and other enhancing software that users need are published and using them frees the developer to focus on their specific development efforts versus tertiary development modules.