L'informatique en nuage (cloud computing) est un paradigme émergent qui révolutionne l'utilisation et la commercialisation des services informatiques. De nos jours, l'impact socio-économique de l'informatique en nuage et plus particulièrement des services de PaaS (plate-forme en tant que service) devient essentiel, puisque le nombre d'utilisateurs et de fournisseurs des cloud PaaS est en pleine croissance. L'objectif principal des fournisseurs de cloud PaaS est de générer le maximum de profit des services qu'ils fournissent. Cela les oblige à faire face à un certain nombre de défis, tels que la gestion efficace des ressources sous-jacentes et la satisfaction des SLAs (contrat de service) des applications hébergées. Dans cette thèse, nous considérons un environnement PaaS hybride de cloud bursting, où le fournisseur PaaS possède un nombre limité de ressources privées et a la possibilité de louer des ressources publiques. Ce choix permet au fournisseur PaaS d'avoir un contrôle complet sur les services hébergés dans les ressources privées et de profiter de ressources publiques pour gérer les périodes de pointe. De plus, nous proposons une solution rentable pour gérer un tel système PaaS sous des contraintes de SLA. Nous définissons une politique d'optimisation de profit qui, à chaque requête d'un nouveau client, évalue le coût d'hébergement de son application en utilisant les ressources publiques et privées et choisit l'option qui génère le plus de profit. Pendant les périodes de pointe la politique considère deux autres options. La première option consiste à emprunter quelques ressources aux applications en cours d'exécution tout en considérant le paiement de pénalités si leur qualité de service est affectée. La seconde option consiste à attendre que des ressources privées soient libérés tout en considérant le paiement de pénalités si la qualité de service de la nouvelle application est affectée. En outre, nous avons conçu et mis en œuvre une architecture de cloud PaaS, appelée Meryn, qui intègre la politique d'optimisation proposée, supporte le cloud bursting et héberge des applications du type batch et MapReduce. Les résultats de notre évaluation montrent l'efficacité de notre approche dans l'optimisation du profit du fournisseur. En effet, comparée à une approche de base, notre approche fournit jusqu'à 11.59 % et 9.02 % plus de profits pour le fournisseur dans respectivement les simulations et les expériences. / Cloud computing is an emerging paradigm revolutionizing the use and marketing of information technology. As the number of cloud users and providers grows, the socio-economical impact of cloud solutions and particularly PaaS (platform as a service) solutions is becoming increasingly critical. The main objective of PaaS providers is to generate the maximum profit from the services they provide. This requires them to face a number of challenges such as efficiently managing the underlying resources and satisfying the SLAs of the hosted applications. This thesis considers a cloud-bursting PaaS environment where the PaaS provider owns a limited number of private resources and is able to rent public cloud resources, when needed. This environment enables the PaaS provider to have full control over services hosted on the private cloud and to take advantage of public clouds for managing peak periods. In this context, we propose a profit-efficient solution for managing the cloud-bursting PaaS system under SLA constraints. We define a profit optimization policy that, after each client request, evaluates the cost of hosting the application using public and private resources and chooses the option that generates the highest profit. During peak periods the optimization policy considers two more options. The first option is to take some resources from running applications, taking into account the payment of penalties if their promised quality of service is affected. The second option is to wait until private resources become available, taking into account the payment of penalties if the promised quality of service of the new application is affected. Furthermore we designed and implemented an open cloud-bursting PaaS system, called Meryn, which integrates the proposed optimization policy and provides support for batch and MapReduce applications. The results of our evaluation show the effectiveness of our approach in optimizing the provider profit. Indeed, compared to a basic approach, our approach provides up to 11.59% and 9.02% more provider profit in, respectively, simulations and experiments.

No description available.

Context. As the number of organizations using cloud application platforms to host their applications increases, the priority of distributing physical resources within those platforms is increasing simultaneously. The goal is to host a higher quantity of applications per physical server, while at the same time retain a satisfying rate of performance combined with certain scalability. The modern needs of customers occasionally also imply an assurance of certain privacy for their applications. Objectives. In this study two types of instances for hosting applications in cloud application platforms, virtual machines and application containers, are comparatively analyzed. This investigation has the goal to expose advantages and disadvantages between the instances in order to determine which is more appropriate for being used in cloud application platforms, in terms of performance, scalability and user isolation. Methods. The comparison is done on a server running Linux Ubuntu 16.04. The virtual machine is created using Devstack, a development environment of Openstack, while the application container is hosted by Docker. Each instance is running an apache web server for handling HTTP requests. The comparison is done by using different benchmark tools for different key usage scenarios and simultaneously observing the resource usage in respective instance. Results. The results are produced by investigating the user isolation and resource occupation of respective instance, by examining the file system, active process handling and resource allocation after creation. Benchmark tools are executed locally on respective instance, for a performance comparison of the usage of physical resources. The amount of CPU operations executed within a given time is measured in order determine the processor performance, while the speed of read and write operations to the main memory is measured in order to determine the RAM performance. A file is also transmitted between host server and application in order to compare the network performance between respective instance, by examining the transfer speed of the file. Lastly a set of benchmark tools are executed on the host server to measure the HTTP server request handling performance and scalability of each instance. The amount of requests handled per second is observed, but also the resource usage for the request handling at an increasing rate of served requests and clients. Conclusions. The virtual machine is a better choice for applications where privacy is a higher priority, due to the complete isolation and abstraction from the rest of the physical server. Virtual machines perform better in handling a higher quantity of requests per second, while application containers is faster in transferring files through network. The container requires a significantly lower amount of resources than the virtual machine in order to run and execute tasks, such as responding to HTTP requests. When it comes to scalability the prefered type of instance depends on the priority of key usage scenarios. Virtual machines have quicker response time for HTTP requests but application containers occupy less physical resources, which makes it logically possible to run a higher quantity of containers than virtual machines simultaneously on the same physical server.

<p>Cloud computing is a new buzzword within the IT-industry, and introduces a whole new way of working with IT. The technique delivers web based services, which results in that the user no longer needs to install an application locally on a computer. Since the application no longer needs to run on a local entity, but in a datacenter located on a service provider, the users no longer need any specific hardware more than a computer with an internet connection. Cloud computing also offers IT-infrastructure and development environments as services, these three service types is better known as cloud services. Through the usage of different types of cloud services, the need for maintenance and hardware is significantly reduced. Therefore, the need for IT-competence in a company is reduced, which offers the company to focus on their core business strategy. A problem with cloud computing is that because it is such a new phenomenon, there is no established definition. This makes the subject hard to understand and easily misunderstood.</p><p>Cloud computing surely seems to solve many of the problems with reliability of systems and hardware that companies struggle with on a daily basis, but is it really that simple? The purpose of this thesis is to understand which types of company preconditions that affect the integration of cloud services in a company. We will also clarify the concept of Cloud computing by divide and describe its different components.</p><p>To investigate the different types of company preconditions and there approach to cloud services we have performed interviews at different companies in associations with our case study.</p><p>The result shows that a cloud service only can be integrated to an organization as long as the organization possesses the right preconditions. We think that cloud services can bring great advantages to organizations that meet these preconditions and that cloud services has the potential to ease the way of work for organizations in the future.</p> / <p>Cloud computing är ett nytt trendord inom IT-branschen och innebär ett nytt sätt att arbeta med IT. Tekniken bygger på att användare av en applikation inte behöver installera en applikation på sin lokala dator utan applikationen förmedlas som en tjänst genom Internet. Då applikationen inte körs på någon lokal enhet utan i en datorhall hos tjänsteleverantören behöver inte användaren ha någon mer specifik hårdvara utöver en dator och en Internetanslutning för att ta del av tjänsten. Även IT-infrastruktur och utvecklingsmiljö som tjänst erbjuds på samma sätt inom Cloud computing, dessa tre typer av tjänster kallas för molntjänster. Genom att använda olika typer av molntjänster minskar den interna driften av system, underhåll av hårdvara och således behövs minmal IT-kompetens inom företag, detta tillåter företag att fokusera på sin kärnverksamhet. Då Cloud computing är ett nytt fenomen finns det ingen erkänd definition av begreppet ännu, detta resulterar i att ämnet blir svårförstått och misstolkas lätt.</p><p>Cloud computing verkar onekligen lösa problematiken med driftsäkerhet som företag tvingas att handskas med dagligen, men är de verkligen så enkelt? Syftet med uppsatsen är att redogöra för vilka förutsättningar som företag besitter som påverkar hur bra olika typer av molntjänster kan integreras i företagets verksamhet. Uppsatsen ska även redogöra för begreppet Cloud computing genom att dela upp och beskriva de olika delar som begreppet består utav.</p><p>För att utreda detta har vi bedrivit en fallstudie genom intervjuer hos utvalda företag för att undersöka företagens förutsättningar och förhållningssätt gentemot olika typer av molntjänster.</p><p>Resultatet visar att de rätta förutsättningarna krävs för att ett företag ska kunna integrera molntjänster i sin verksamhet. Vi anser att molntjänster kan medföra stora fördelar för de företagen som besitter dessa förutsättningar, och att molntjänster har potential att underlätta verksamheten för många organisationer i framtiden.</p>

Le « Cloud computing » est un nouveau modèle de systèmes de calcul. L’infrastructure, les applications et les données sont déplacées de machines localisées sur des systèmes dématérialisés accédés sous forme de service via Internet. Le modèle « coût à l’utilisation » permet des économies de coût en modifiant la configuration à l’exécution (élasticité). L’objectif de cette thèse est de contribuer à la gestion de la Qualité de Service (QdS) des applications s’exécutant dans le Cloud. Les services Cloud prétendent fournir une flexibilité importante dans l’attribution des ressources de calcul tenant compte des variations perçues, telles qu’une fluctuation de la charge. Les capacités de variation doivent être précisément exprimées dans un contrat (le Service Level Agreement, SLA) lorsque l’application est hébergée par un fournisseur de Plateform as a Service (PaaS). Dans cette thèse, nous proposons et nous décrivons formellement le langage de description de SLA PSLA. PSLA est fondé sur WS-Agreement qui est lui-même un langage extensible de description de SLA. Des négociations préalables à la signature du SLA sont indispensables, pendant lesquelles le fournisseur de PaaS doit évaluer la faisabilité des termes du contrat. Cette évaluation, par exemple le temps de réponse, le débit maximal de requêtes servies, etc, est fondée sur une analyse du comportement de l’application déployée dans l’infrastructure cloud. Une analyse du comportement de l’application est donc nécessaire et habituellement assurée par des tests (benchmarks). Ces tests sont relativement coûteux et une étude précise de faisabilité demande en général de nombreux tests. Dans cette thèse, nous proposons une méthode d’étude de faisabilité concernant les critères de performance, à partir d’une proposition de SLA exprimée en PSLA. Cette méthode est un compromis entre la précision d’une étude exhaustive de faisabilité et les coûts de tests. Les résultats de cette étude constituent le modèle initial de la correspondance charge entrante-allocation de ressources utilisée à l’exécution. Le contrôle à l’exécution (runtime control) d’une application gère l’allocation de ressources en fonction des besoins, s’appuyant en particulier sur les capacités de passage à l’échelle (scalability) des infrastructures de cloud. Nous proposons RCSREPRO (Runtime Control method based on Schedule, REactive and PROactive methods), une méthode de contrôle à l’exécution fondée sur la planification et des contrôles réactifs et prédictifs. Les besoins d’adaptation à l’exécution sont essentiellement dus à une variation de la charge soumise à l’application, variations difficiles à estimer avant exécution et seulement grossièrement décrites dans le SLA. Il est donc nécessaire de reporter à l’exécution les décisions d’adaptation et d’y évaluer les possibles variations de charge. Comme les actions de modification des ressources attribuées peuvent prendre plusieurs minutes, RCSREPRO réalise un contrôle prédictif fondée sur l’analyse de charge et la correspondance indicateurs de performance-ressources attribuées, initialement définie via des tests. Cette correspondance est améliorée en permanence à l’exécution. En résumé, les contributions de cette thèse sont la proposition de langage PSLA pour décrire les SLA ; une proposition de méthode pour l’étude de faisabilité d’un SLA ; une proposition de méthode (RCSREPRO) de contrôle à l’exécution de l’application pour garantir le SLA. Les travaux de cette thèse s’inscrivent dans le contexte du projet FSN OpenCloudware (www.opencloudware.org) et ont été financés en partie par celui-ci. / Cloud computing is a new computing model. Infrastructure, application and data are moved from local machines to internet and provided as services. Cloud users, such as application owners, can greatly save budgets from the elasticity feature, which refers to the “pay as you go” and on-demand characteristics, of cloud service. The goal of this thesis is to manage the Quality of Service (QoS) for applications running in cloud environments Cloud services provide application owners with great flexibility to assign “suitable” amount of resources according to the changing needs, for example caused by fluctuating request rate. “Suitable” or not needs to be clearly documented in Service Level Agreements (SLA) if this resource demanding task is hosted in a third party, such as a Platform as a Service (PaaS) provider. In this thesis, we propose and formally describe PSLA, which is a SLA description language for PaaS. PSLA is based on WS-Agreement, which is extendable and widely accepted as a SLA description language. Before signing the SLA contract, negotiations are unavoidable. During negotiations, the PaaS provider needs to evaluate if the SLA drafts are feasible or not. These evaluations are based on the analysis of the behavior of the application deployed in the cloud infrastructure, for instance throughput of served requests, response time, etc. Therefore, application dependent analysis, such as benchmark, is needed. Benchmarks are relatively costly and precise feasibility study usually imply large amount of benchmarks. In this thesis, we propose a benchmark based SLA feasibility study method to evaluate whether or not a SLA expressed in PSLA, including QoS targets, resource constraints, cost constraints and workload constraints can be achieved. This method makes tradeoff between the accuracy of a SLA feasibility study and benchmark costs. The intermediate of this benchmark based feasibility study process will be used as the workload-resource mapping model of our runtime control method. When application is running in a cloud infrastructure, the scalability feature of cloud infrastructures allows us to allocate and release resources according to changing needs. These resource provisioning activities are named runtime control. We propose the Runtime Control method based onSchedule, REactive and PROactive methods (RCSREPRO). Changing needs are mainly caused by the fluctuating workload for majority of the applications running in the cloud. The detailed workload information, for example the request arrival rates at scheduled points in time, is difficult to be known before running the application. Moreover, workload information listed in PSLA is too rough to give a fitted resource provisioning schedule before runtime. Therefore, runtime control decisions are needed to be performed in real time. Since resource provisioning actions usually require several minutes, RCSREPRO performs a proactive runtime control which means that it predicts future needs and assign resources in advance to have them ready when they are needed. Hence, prediction of the workload and workload-resource mapping are two problems involved in proactive runtime control. The workload-resource mapping model, which is initially derived from benchmarks in SLA feasibility study is continuously improved in a feedback way at runtime, increasing the accuracy of the control.To sum up, we contribute with three aspects to the QoS management of application running in the cloud: creation of PSLA, a PaaS level SLA description language; proposal of a benchmark based SLA feasibility study method; proposal of a runtime control method, RCSREPRO, to ensure the SLA when the application is running. The work described in this thesis is motivated and funded by the FSN OpenCloudware project (www.opencloudware.org).

Cloud computing is a new buzzword within the IT-industry, and introduces a whole new way of working with IT. The technique delivers web based services, which results in that the user no longer needs to install an application locally on a computer. Since the application no longer needs to run on a local entity, but in a datacenter located on a service provider, the users no longer need any specific hardware more than a computer with an internet connection. Cloud computing also offers IT-infrastructure and development environments as services, these three service types is better known as cloud services. Through the usage of different types of cloud services, the need for maintenance and hardware is significantly reduced. Therefore, the need for IT-competence in a company is reduced, which offers the company to focus on their core business strategy. A problem with cloud computing is that because it is such a new phenomenon, there is no established definition. This makes the subject hard to understand and easily misunderstood. Cloud computing surely seems to solve many of the problems with reliability of systems and hardware that companies struggle with on a daily basis, but is it really that simple? The purpose of this thesis is to understand which types of company preconditions that affect the integration of cloud services in a company. We will also clarify the concept of Cloud computing by divide and describe its different components. To investigate the different types of company preconditions and there approach to cloud services we have performed interviews at different companies in associations with our case study. The result shows that a cloud service only can be integrated to an organization as long as the organization possesses the right preconditions. We think that cloud services can bring great advantages to organizations that meet these preconditions and that cloud services has the potential to ease the way of work for organizations in the future. / Cloud computing är ett nytt trendord inom IT-branschen och innebär ett nytt sätt att arbeta med IT. Tekniken bygger på att användare av en applikation inte behöver installera en applikation på sin lokala dator utan applikationen förmedlas som en tjänst genom Internet. Då applikationen inte körs på någon lokal enhet utan i en datorhall hos tjänsteleverantören behöver inte användaren ha någon mer specifik hårdvara utöver en dator och en Internetanslutning för att ta del av tjänsten. Även IT-infrastruktur och utvecklingsmiljö som tjänst erbjuds på samma sätt inom Cloud computing, dessa tre typer av tjänster kallas för molntjänster. Genom att använda olika typer av molntjänster minskar den interna driften av system, underhåll av hårdvara och således behövs minmal IT-kompetens inom företag, detta tillåter företag att fokusera på sin kärnverksamhet. Då Cloud computing är ett nytt fenomen finns det ingen erkänd definition av begreppet ännu, detta resulterar i att ämnet blir svårförstått och misstolkas lätt. Cloud computing verkar onekligen lösa problematiken med driftsäkerhet som företag tvingas att handskas med dagligen, men är de verkligen så enkelt? Syftet med uppsatsen är att redogöra för vilka förutsättningar som företag besitter som påverkar hur bra olika typer av molntjänster kan integreras i företagets verksamhet. Uppsatsen ska även redogöra för begreppet Cloud computing genom att dela upp och beskriva de olika delar som begreppet består utav. För att utreda detta har vi bedrivit en fallstudie genom intervjuer hos utvalda företag för att undersöka företagens förutsättningar och förhållningssätt gentemot olika typer av molntjänster. Resultatet visar att de rätta förutsättningarna krävs för att ett företag ska kunna integrera molntjänster i sin verksamhet. Vi anser att molntjänster kan medföra stora fördelar för de företagen som besitter dessa förutsättningar, och att molntjänster har potential att underlätta verksamheten för många organisationer i framtiden.

In today’s IT-landscape cloud computing is one of the hottest topics. There are many emerging uses and technologies for the cloud. Deployment of applications is one of the main usages of the cloud today. This has led to companies giving developers more responsibilities with deployment. Therefore, there is a need to update educations in computer science by including cloud deployment. For these reasons, this thesis attempts to give a reasonable proposal for how cloud deployment could be taught in a university course.A literature study was conducted to gather information about topics surrounding cloud deployment. These were topics like cloud computing, service models, building techniques and cloud services. Then a case study was conducted on three different cloud services, OpenShift, Cloud Foundry, and Heroku. This was to learn how to deploy. Lastly, two interviews and a survey were conducted with people that have an insight into the subject and could provide reasonable information.Based on our case study, interviews and survey we concluded a reasonable approach to how deployment with cloud services could be taught. It can be taught with a theoretical and practical part. The theoretical part could be a lecture introducing Heroku and OpenShift, followed by an assignment where students deploy an application to them. The reasons we recommend Heroku and OpenShift is for Heroku’s simple and fast deployment and OpenShift for being more educative.We also realized that cloud deployment would work best as a stand-alone course. Because during the degree project it became clear how broad cloud deployment is. / I dagens IT-miljö är molnet ett av de hetaste ämnena. Det finns många nya användningsområden och teknologier för molnet. Driftsättning av applikationer är ett av de viktigaste användningsområdena av molnet idag. Detta har lett till att företag ger utvecklare mer ansvar vid driftsättning. Därför är det nödvändigt att förändra utbildningar i datorvetenskap genom att inkludera driftsättning i molnmiljö. Av dessa skäl försöker denna avhandling ge ett rimligt förslag på hur driftsättning i molnmiljö kan läras ut på ett universitet.En litteraturstudie genomfördes för att samla information om ämnen som berör driftsättning i molnmiljö. Dessa var ämnen som molnet, servicemodeller, byggtekniker och molntjänster. Sedan genomfördes en fallstudie på tre olika molntjänster, OpenShift, Cloud Foundry och Heroku. Detta var för att lära sig hur man driftsätter. Slutligen genomfördes två intervjuer och en undersökning med personer som har insikt i ämnet och som kan ge rimlig information.Baserat på vår fallstudie, intervjuer och undersökning drog vi en slutsats för ett rimligt tillvägagångssätt för hur driftsättning i molnmiljö kunde läras ut. Det kan undervisas med en teoretisk och praktisk del. Den teoretiska delen kan vara en föreläsning som introducerar Heroku och OpenShift, följt av en uppgift där studenter driftsätter en applikation till dem. Anledningarna till att vi rekommenderar Heroku och OpenShift är för Heroku’s enkla och snabba driftsättning och OpenShift för att den är mycket mer lärorik.Vi insåg också att driftsättning i molnmiljö skulle fungera bäst som en fristående kurs. Eftersom det under examensprojektet blev klart hur brett driftsättning i molnmiljö är.

Cloud Computing (CC) is one of the fast growing computer network technologies and many companies offer their services through cloud network. Cloud Computing has many properties with respect to the existing traditional service provisions like scalability, availability, fault tolerance, capability and so on which are supported by many IT companies like Google, Amazon, Salesforce.com. These IT companies have more chances to adapt their services into a new environment, known as Cloud computing systems. There are many cloud computing services which are being provided by many IT companies.The purpose of this thesis is to investigate which cloud environment (public, private and hybrid) and services (Infrastructure as a Service, Software as a Service, and Platform as a Service) are suitable for Swedish Armed Forces (SWAF) with respect to performance, security, cost, flexibility and functionality. SWAF is using private (internal) cloud for communications where both sensitive and non-sensitive information are located in the internal cloud. There are problems like maintenance of hardware, cost issues and secure communication while maintaining the private cloud. In order to overcome those problems we have suggested a hybrid and community cloud environment and SaaS, IaaS, PaaS services for SWAF.For suggesting these cloud environments and cloud services we have performed a literature study and two empirical studies (survey and interviews) with different organizations.A new cloud model is designed based on the suggested cloud environment, separate storage spaces for sensitive and non-sensitive information, suitable services and an effective infrastructure for sharing the internal information for SWAF.

Over the recent decade the world has seen an increase in businesses launching new, or changing theirbusiness model to, digital platforms. New and established businesses are flocking to digital platformsin order to evolve their business model and keep up with advancements in technology, such as cloudcomputing, which enables commerce and communication on a much faster and more streamlinedlevel. Digital platforms with two-sided markets often face fierce competition from market incumbentswhich benefit from traditional supply-side economies of scale, as well as from other digital platforms.Therefore, the competitive strategy adopted at market launch and under operations will have a greatimpact on the platform performance in terms of firm financial performance.This study is divided into two parts and is performed with the objective to gain insight into thecompetitive strategies adopted by digital platform businesses with two-sided markets, and how suchstrategic decisions may be informed in favor of profitability. The first part investigates the influence ofinternal factors, such as debt ratio, quick ratio, sales growth, and capital turnover ratio, on the firmfinancial performance (measured by return on assets) of digital platforms with two-sided markets inthe Nordics. The second part investigates the relationship between the firm financial performance(measured by return on assets) of digital platform businesses with two-sided markets after launch andthe type of strategy adopted. Subsequently, two hypotheses are presented. Subsequently, twohypotheses are presented. A panel data regression model is developed to evaluate these relationships,allowing the authors to test the null hypotheses. The data set used in the panel data regression modelcomprise an unbalanced sample of 27 companies who have launched their platforms in Norway,Sweden, and Denmark. Financial data was gathered in the form of return on assets (dependentvariable), capital turnover ratio, quick ratio, debt ratio, and sales growth (explanatory variables).These companies were grouped depending on which strategy was adopted on market launch and underearly operations. These strategies are subsidy, seeding and marquee users, micro market launch andpiggybacking (categorical ‘dummy’ variables).Studying the firm financial performance of businesses which adopt digital platforms will help us tobetter understand the efficacy of strategies adopted and how these strategies impact financialperformance. Both null hypotheses tested may be partially rejected. The authors conclude that theinternal factors debt ratio, quick ratio, and sales growth have a significant influence on theprofitability (measured by return on assets) of digital platforms with two-sided markets in the Nordics.The influence of the internal factor capital turnover ratio on profitability is statistically insignificant.Quick ratio has a positive significant influence on profitability, whereas debt ratio and sales growthhave a negative influence. The authors also conclude that companies which have business modelsallowing them to adopt a subsidy strategy yields stronger profitability than those which adopt otherstrategies. Companies which entice seed &amp; marquee users to their platform as a strategy yields thesecond strongest profitability. Companies which choose a micro market launch strategy yield theweakest profitability. The authors of this study will not draw conclusions on the efficacy of theadoption of a piggybacking strategy on profitability due to the limited number of observationsattributed to the piggybacking dataset.Future studies may expand upon this research with the inclusion of a wider catchment of businesses,as well as the inclusion of a wider data set to include other geographical locations and improvestatistical significance of the data set. An improvement to the study may also be to analyze thecorrelation between the strength of competitors upon market entry and the efficacy of the strategiesadopted.