Cloud computing offers higher reliability and lower up-front IT costs than traditional computing environments and is a great way to dynamically scale both resources and capabilities. For further efficiency and consistency, cloud computing tasks can also be automated with tools such as Ansible. In this thesis, we will analyze and compare the abilities of Ansible with the three leading cloud platforms, i.e. Azure, Amazon Web Services (AWS), and Google Cloud Platform (GCP). To evaluate this, we cover three different areas of automation with cloud platforms. These areas are performance, user complexity, and missing network functionalities. The performance was evaluated through experiments that revealed a big gap between the platforms, where AWS was the clear winner in all scenarios. Microsoft Azure was slightly faster than GCP when a low number of virtual machines were created but GCP scaled better than Azure when more virtual machines were created. The user complexity was evaluated on the setup process and the creation of playbooks where Azure was the clear winner in both areas. AWS and GCP had similar setup processes, but AWS takes second place through its superior documentation for the creation of playbooks. All three platforms had missing network functionalities, but the majority of the missing functionalities were not relevant as they were not related to deployment which is the main usage of an automation tool like Ansible. However, some deployment functions were missing, for example, the firewall function for AWS was missing in Ansible.

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Forecasting has its application in various domains as the decision-makers are provided with a more predictable and reliable estimate of events that are yet to occur. Typically, a user would invest in licensed software or subscribe to a monthly or yearly plan in order to make such forecasts. The framework presented here differs from conventional software in forecasting, as it allows any interested party to use the proposed services on a pay-per-use basis so that they can avoid investing heavily in the required infrastructure. The Framework-as-a-Service (FaaS) presented here uses Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) to implement Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA). For forecasting, collection of data, its analysis and forecasting responsibilities lies with users, who have to put together other tools or software in order to produce a forecast. FaaS offers each of these responsibilities as a service, namely, External Data Collection Framework (EDCF), Internal Data Retrieval Framework (IDRF) and Forecast Generation Framework (FGF). FaaS Controller, being a composite service based on the above three, is responsible for coordinating activities between them. These services are accessible through Economic Endpoint (EE) or Technical Endpoint (TE) that can be used by a remote client in order to obtain cost or perform a forecast, respectively. The use of Cloud Computing makes these services available over the network to be used as software to forecast energy for solar or wind resources. These services can also be used as a platform to create new services by merging existing functionality with new service features for forecasting. Eventually, this can lead to faster development of newer services where a user can choose which services to use and pay for, presenting the use of FaaS as Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) in forecasting. / Master of Science

This thesis investigates the implementation of an Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) Teamschat bot to enhance the efficiency of a service organization, utilizing Microsoft Azure’s AI services.The project combines the retrieval capabilities of Azure AI Search with OpenAI’s GPT-3.5 Turboand Meta’s Llama 3 70B-instruct. The aim is to develop a chat bot capable of handling bothstructured and unstructured data. The motivation for this work comes from the limitations ofstandalone Large Language Models (LLMs) which often fail to provide accurate and contextuallyrelevant answers without external knowledge. The project uses the retriever and two languagemodels and evaluates them using F1 scoring. The retriever performs well, but the RAG modelproduces wrong or too long answers. Metrics other than F1 scoring could be used, and future workin prompt engineering as well as larger test datasets could improve model performance.

I detta projekt har SharePoint integrerats i SiteVision. Flera av SiteVision AB:s kunder har efterfrågat en möjlighet att integrera produkten med SharePoint. Microsoft tillhandahåller inga direkta API:er för SharePoints objektmodell i Java som SiteVision är skrivet i. SiteVision AB visste inte hur kunderna ville kunna arbeta med SharePoint i SiteVision och var angelägna om att ta reda på detta. Det övergripande syftet med denna rapport har varit att möjliggöra en attraktiv integration av SharePoint från SiteVision. Detta har utförts genom att undersöka vilka delar av SharePoint som SiteVision AB:s kunder vill kunna komma åt från SiteVision och hur kunderna vill kunna komma åt dessa delar i SiteVision. Undersökningen har genomförts genom kvalitativa intervjuer med några av SiteVision AB:s kunder. Undersökningen har visat att kunderna helst vill ha en integration mot SharePoints dokumenthanteringssystem. De vill ha möjligheten att lista filer från SharePoint i SiteVision utifrån en given mapp eller metadata. De vill även kunna söka efter SharePoint-filer i SiteVision. Ett internt API för kommunikation mot SharePoint i Java har konstruerats. Efter kundernas önskemål har en SiteVision-modul som listar filer utifrån en angiven mapp skapats. Dessutom har en enkel prototyp till sökmodul konstruerats. Resultaten från intervjuerna kan inte anses vara representativa för hela kundkretsen men gav en indikation om vad som skulle utvecklas först. Projektets mål är uppfyllda men modulerna behöver utvecklas vidare innan de kan lanseras. / In this thesis project, SharePoint has been integrated in SiteVision. Several customers of SiteVision AB have requested an integration of SharePoint from SiteVision. Microsoft doesn’t provide any API for Java to SharePoint object model. SiteVision AB did not know in what form the customers wanted to access SharePoint from SiteVision but was keen to find out. The overall aim with this thesis has been to make an appealing integration of SharePoint from SiteVision possible. This has been accomplished by performing a study investigating what parts of SharePoint the customers wanted to access from SiteVision and in what form they wanted to access it. The study has been performed by qualitative interviews with some of the customers of SiteVision AB. The study has shown that the customers most of all wants to integrate the document management system of SharePoint. They want to be able to view SharePoint files inside SiteVision based on a provided folder, or file meta data. They also want to search for SharePoint files in SiteVision. An internal API for communication with SharePoint in Java has been constructed. Based on the customers’ requests, a SiteVision module that lists SharePoint files based on a folder has been created. Furthermore, a simple prototype for a search module has been constructed. The results from the study cannot be considered as representative of all customers but gave an indication of what should be developed first. The overall aim has been fulfilled but the modules need additional developing before they can be released.

Mjukvara i datorer styr många viktiga funktioner i dagens samhälle och används i stor utsträckning för att kommunicera men även för att styra utrustning. För att mjukvara ska fungera tillförlitligt behöver den byggas korrekt och testas utförligt. För att uppnå tillförlitlighet kan en byggserver används för att automatiskt bygga och testa mjukvaran. Den här rapporten beskriver hur en prototyp av ett övervakningssystem för byggservrar skapats. Systemet sköter övervakningen genom en övervakningstjänst som hämtar information från en byggserver av typen CruiseControl.NET [10] och presenterar informationen på en webbportal. Informationen som hämtas ut från byggservern går från en hög abstraktionsnivå ner till minsta detalj som är baserad på loggfiler från bygget, med exempelvis information om kompileringsfel. Utvecklingen av övervakningssystemet har haft fokus på att göra det möjligt att använda molntjänster och på det sättet inte begränsa vart en byggserver finns placerad. En av de molntjänster som använts är Service Bus Relay [27] som hanterar kommunikationen mellan en övervakningstjänst och webbportalen. Webbportalen har utvecklats för att vara responsiv [34] för på så sätt stödja mobila enheter och ge användaren frihet att besöka webbportalen oavsett enhet. Webbportalen använder sig av en databas för att lagra informationen som bland annat möjliggör övervakning av flera byggservrar, och den välutvecklade användarhanteringen. Det har gjorts flera lärdomar, bland annat genom upptäckt av en bugg i Microsofts implementation av meddelandehanteringen i Service Bus Relay. / Software in computers control many important functions in today's society and are widely used for communication but also to control equipment. For the software to work reliably it needs to be built correctly and tested extensively. To achieve reliability, a build server can be used to automatically build and test the software. This report describes how a prototype of a monitoring system for the build servers was created. The system will be monitored by a monitoring service that retrieves information from a build server using the CruiseControl.NET [10] software. The information gathered by the monitoring service will be presented on a web portal. The information retrieved from build the server goes from a high level of abstraction down to the smallest detail that is based on the log files from the build server, for example, information about compilation errors. The development of the monitoring system has been focused on making it possible to use cloud services and thus not restrict where a build server is located. One of the cloud services used is the Service Bus Relay [27] that handles the communication between a monitoring service and the web portal. The web portal is developed to be responsive [34] and provide support for mobile devices which give the user the freedom to visit the web portal from whatever device. The web portal uses a database to store information which enables monitoring of multiple build servers. A well-developed user management system is used on the web portal which provides administrators with an effective tool for user management. There have been several lessons learned, including the discovery of a bug in the Microsoft implementation of message handling in the Service Bus Relay.

This diploma thesis deals with Cloud computing, in particular its implementation of Microsoft's Windows Azure platform. The following objectives were defined for the thesis, which is analyzing and identifying the essential characteristics of Cloud computing with a focus on the Windows Azure platform, characterizing the key differences of applications in the cloud than on-premise applications, formulate recommendations for enabling transformation of existing applications into the Microsoft Cloud computing, which is delivered as a service. The main contribution of the work is to identify key differences between Windows Azure and on-premise solution. Creating recommendations to minimize the negative impact of these differences and maximize the benefits associated with the use of Windows Azure Cloud Computing platform.

The main objective of this thesis is to introduce the Windows Azure platform, its possibilities and limits, particularly with regard to interaction with mobile clients running on the Windows Phone 7 platform. This is demonstrated by the development of an application designed to ease navigation through difficult terrain. This application is primarily designed to help cyclists and people with handicap restricting their movement. The knowledge acquired through design and implementation of this application is generalized to be useful for other developers using Windows Azure. The application is developed with focus on the usefulness for the defined target groups. This thesis is focused on the server side of the application running on the Windows Azure platform. The client side of the application running on the Windows Phone 7 platform is not covered in this thesis and is described in detail by Bc. Vít Čurda in his thesis Development of map application for tracking in cloud - Client side on Windows Phone 7.

This thesis discusses design and implementation of a cloud computer system which processes end-user monitoring data. Using a defined web service interface, the system is receiving raw monitoring data and then it processes them. Finally, it presents the data to end-users. Entire application is written in C# and deployed to the Windows Azure Platform.

When selling a service to companies or individuals, it’s important to deliver what you sell. Currently, Softronic provides companies with a platform that provides different types of services. These services create opportunities to efficiently develop government functions in accordance with the Government’s action plan for e-governance. These services are hosted by using the cloud computing platform Microsoft Windows Azure. The services’ functionality is important for both Softronic and their customers’ businesses. To know early whether there is a problem or if there will be problems with the services, Softronic wanted to monitor one of these services with the help of an external monitoring service.   The aim of this thesis was to compare three different systems for monitoring cloud-based services, implement the most suitable one and develop an application for Windows 8 where customers can see the status of their message channel inside the service. The monitoring systems tested were chosen and judged according to Softronics needs and monitoring requirements. A monitoring service called New Relic was chosen for implementation. New Relic has support for most of the required features, and for the rest of the features, an application was developed. A Windows 8 application and a website were developed that show information about customers’ message channels, and a web service was developed to supply both of them with the data they need. / När man säljer en tjänst till ett företag eller privatpersoner är det viktigt att man levererar det man lovar. I dagsläget tillhandahåller Softronic en plattform med olika tjänster. Dessa tjänster hjälper till att skapa möjligheter för att lättare kunna utveckla myndigheters verksamhet enligt regeringens handlingsplan för e-förvaltning. Dessa tjänser är driftsatta i Microsofts molnplattform, Windows Azure.   Att dessa tjänser fungerar är kritiskt för både Softronic och deras kunder. För att kunna, i ett tidigt stadie, få reda på om det är problem med tjänsterna eller om det kommer bli problem med tjänsterna, ville Softronic övervaka en av dessa tjänster med en redan befintlig monitoreringstjänst.   Målet med detta examensarbete var att jämföra tre olika system för övervakning av moln-baserade tjänster för att slutligen implementera den bäst passande av de tre samt utveckla en applikation för Windows 8 där kunden kan se status på sin egen meddelandekanal. I arbetet har de valda applikationerna testats och bedömts efter Softronics behov och krav på övervakning. En monitoreringstjänst som heter New Relic valdes för implementation. New Relic har stöd för de flesta av de nödvändiga funktionerna, och för de resterande funktionerna utvecklades en applikation. En Windows 8-applikation och en websida utvecklades för att visualisera kunders meddelandekanaler, och en webbtjänst utvecklades för att förse båda dessa med den information de behöver.