Australia's tertiary educational environment is changing; in the past decade, it has faced a new set of challenges and pressures (Cunningham et al., 1998) that are encroaching on the traditional definitions of what higher education is. These challenges often dictate the directions in which the tertiary education environment evolves into. Within the framework of institutional reforms, the adopted policies are often the best indicators of that transition. Flexible delivery or learning has been espoused as a means of meeting and mediating some of those challenges. With their emphasis on catering to the needs and expectations of the consumer in a consumerist society, flexible policies are becoming the norm in most institutes of higher learning. However, of interest within the structure of the flexible delivery approach is the development of learner management systems (LMS). The question is what are learner management systems? What do they represent and what do they offer to the learner that differentiates it from the traditional forms of learning? In its basic form, a learner management system is essentially a series of processes that are developed and organised so as to efficiently provide the learner with the required access and interaction required to facilitate his or her learning. However, what are the benefits of being aware of the capabilities and limitations afforded by such approaches? How does it contribute to the process of teaching and learning in the context of higher education? The effectiveness of how these learner management systems are used in context to its application in multimedia programmes is of importance. Institutions are progressively introducing similar learning systems into their delivery framework. The question as to whether a singular adaptive system or a customised option remains to be tested.

Despite the fact that Sustainable Development (SD) has been growing since the 1980s, methods and models that assist in carrying out sustainable strategies are still uncommon. IT managers at AstraZeneca (AZ) struggle to come up with the most sustainable decision in IT because there are no methods/models that facilitate such a decision-making process at AZ. This thesis aims at evaluating newly suggested sustainability additions to the Adaptive Delivery Framework (ADF) by comparing them to the Green Design (GD) (a model for sustainable decision-making of capital investment projects at AZ) and the Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP). The evaluation was done using quantitative and qualitative methods. The quantitative method utilized a method from previous research that employs pair-wise comparisons and matrix multiplication, and the qualitative method was in the form of one-on-one semi-structured interviews with AstraZeneca employees. The results showed that the new ADF performed sufficiently well against the already established GD and the literature’s state-of-the-art AHP. The new additions to ADF are capable of dealing with the sustainability problems of IT. Furthermore, the results from the quantitative and the qualitative methods suggested that the additions could improve in three key areas, namely the interdisciplinary approach, long-term perspective, and participation. First, the interdisciplinary approach could be improved by including the indirect and transformational effects of IT. Second, the long-term perspective could be improved by incorporating some long-term assessments, such as the expected number of uses, expected data access proportion, and the expected lifetime. Third, the participation could be improved by including a facilitator during the URS meetings. / Trots att hållbar utveckling SD har vuxit sedan dess 1980-talet, metoder och modeller som hjälper till att genomföra hållbara strategier är fortfarande ovanliga. IT-chefer på AstraZeneca (AZ) kämpar för att komma upp med det mest hållbara beslutet inom IT eftersom det inte finns några metoder/modeller som underlättar en sådan beslutsprocess på AZ. Denna avhandling syftar till utvärderar nyligen föreslagna hållbarhetstillägg till Adaptive Delivery Framework (ADF) genom att jämföra dem med Green Design (GD) (en modell för hållbart beslutsfattande av kapitalinvesteringsprojekt på AZ) och den Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP). Utvärderingen gjordes med hjälp av kvantitativa och kvalitativa metoder. Den kvantitativa metoden använde en metod från tidigare forskning som använder parvisa jämförelser och matrismultiplikation, och den kvalitativa metoden var i form av en- semistrukturerade intervjuer med AstraZeneca anställda. Resultaten visade att den nya ADF:en fungerade tillräckligt bra mot den redan etablerade GD och litteraturens toppmoderna AHP. De nya tilläggen till ADF är kapabla att hantera hållbarhetsproblemen inom IT. Dessutom, resultaten från de kvantitativa och kvalitativa metoderna antydde det tilläggen skulle kunna förbättras inom tre nyckelområden, nämligen det tvärvetenskapliga förhållningssätt, långsiktighet och delaktighet. Först det tvärvetenskapliga tillvägagångssätt skulle kunna förbättras genom att inkludera indirekta och transformerande effekter av IT. För det andra skulle det långsiktiga perspektivet kunna förbättras genom att införliva vissa långsiktiga bedömningar, såsom det förväntade antalet användningar, förväntas dataåtkomstandel och förväntad livslängd. För det tredje, deltagandet skulle kunna förbättras genom att inkludera en facilitator under URS-mötena.

Utility Computing is one of the most discussed business models in the context of Cloud Computing. Service providers are more and more pushed into the role of utilities by their customer's expectations. Subsequently, the demand for predictable service availability and pay-per-use pricing models increases. Furthermore, for providers, a new opportunity to optimise resource usage offers arises, resulting from new virtualisation techniques. In this context, the control of service quality and profit depends on a deep understanding of the representation of the relationship between business and technique. This research analyses the relationship between the business model of Utility Computing and Service-oriented Computing architectures hosted in Cloud environments. The relations are clarified in detail for the entire service life cycle and throughout all architectural layers. Based on the elaborated relations, an approach to a delivery framework is evolved, in order to enable the optimisation of the relation attributes, while the service implementation passes through business planning, development, and operations. Related work from academic literature does not cover the collected requirements on service offers in this context. This finding is revealed by a critical review of approaches in the fields of Cloud Computing, Grid Computing, and Application Clusters. The related work is analysed regarding appropriate provision architectures and quality assurance approaches. The main concepts of the delivery framework are evaluated based on a simulation model. To demonstrate the ability of the framework to model complex pay-per-use service cascades in Cloud environments, several experiments have been conducted. First outcomes proof that the contributions of this research undoubtedly enable the optimisation of service quality and profit in Cloud-based Service-oriented Computing architectures.