Nowadays, a multitude of functionally equal web services are available. By thisbroad offer, the need of a service recommendation based on non-functional characteristics(e.g. price, response time, availability) is increasing. The static ServiceLevel Agreements (SLAs) of service providers cannot suffice this need. SLAs arenot reliable enough, due to the fact that they do not cover the dynamic performanceand quality changes of services during their lifetime. This bachelor’s thesis waswritten within a research project of the Linnaeus University in Sweden and the KarlsruheUniversity of Applied Science in Germany. The goal of this research projectis to eliminate the issues as described above. For this reason, a framework for anoptimized service selection was developed. Instead of using the static SLAs, measurementsof each service call are taken. On the basis of the measurements and therequirements of the consumer, the framework then provides an automated best-fitservice selection. The purpose of this thesis is to involve the geographic location of each serviceconsumer in the automated service selection. Therefore, a mobile app was developedto get a sufficient amount of real world test data. This app measures service calls andadditionally records the geographic location of the user. Based on the geographiclocation, the collected measurement data then were grouped into regions. Thereby,it could be shown that the geographic location of the user can be used to improve theoptimal service selection. / Service-Oriented Computing

FundaÃÃo Cearense de Apoio ao Desenvolvimento Cientifico e TecnolÃgico / Esta dissertaÃÃo trata-se de um estudo de caso realizado em um Banco de Alimentos localizado em Fortaleza, o Mesa Brasil SESC. O objetivo geral da pesquisa à propor melhorias logÃsticas ao Banco de Alimentos de modo a aumentar o nÃvel de serviÃos do atendimento Ãs associaÃÃes cadastradas. A logÃstica do Mesa Brasil se caracteriza pela redistribuiÃÃo para as associaÃÃes beneficentes dos alimentos doados por empresas parceiras. Esses alimentos estÃo fora dos padrÃes de comercializaÃÃo, mas ainda prÃprios para o consumo humano. Foram utilizadas na pesquisa cinco fontes de evidÃncias: documentos, registros em arquivos, entrevistas semiestruturadas, aplicaÃÃo de questionÃrios, observaÃÃo direta e participante. Foram propostas as seguintes aÃÃes de melhorias para os problemas diagnosticados no Banco de Alimentos: novo sistema de rotas onde o Mesa Brasil se responsabilizaria tambÃm pelo transporte das doaÃÃes atà as associaÃÃes; aquisiÃÃo de compartimento de separaÃÃo mÃvel dentro dos caminhÃes para o transporte de cargas incompatÃveis, instrumentos de monitoramento da temperatura na armazenagem de alimentos; prÃtica do FIFO ou PEPS (primeiro que entra, primeiro que sai); aquisiÃÃo de prateleiras para organizar as doaÃÃes de acordo com nÃvel de perecibilidade e tipo de alimento; desenvolvimento de uma estratÃgia para captar doadores; realizaÃÃo das visitas de monitoramento nas associaÃÃes a fim de verificar a manipulaÃÃo e a utilizaÃÃo dos alimentos doados; realizaÃÃo de reuniÃes de integraÃÃo com os funcionÃrios; treinamentos dos funcionÃrios antes de iniciarem suas atividades; visitas aos fornecedores; redefinir as janelas de tempo para cada doador; novo layout proposto para o Banco de Alimentos. / This dissertation is based on a case study conducted in a food bank located in Fortaleza/Brazil, named Mesa Brasil SESC. The objective of the research is to propose improvements to the logistics of the food bank in order to increase the level of service to registered associations. The logistics of Mesa Brasil is characterized by redistribution to the charities of food donated by partner companies. These foods are outside the standards of marketing, but still good enough for human consumption. The main sources of evidence used in the research were documents, files, semi-structured interviews, questionnaires, direct and participative observation. The following improvements were proposed for the problems identified in the Food Bank: a new route system was developed, allowing Mesa Brazil for the transportation of donations to the charitable associations; equipment acquisition of mobile compartments for the trucks of Mesa Brasil to separate incompatible cargoes during transportation; instruments for temperature monitoring in food storage; practice FIFO (first one in, first out); acquisition of shelves to organize donations according to perishability level and type of food; developing a strategy to capture donors; realization of monitoring visits associations in order to check the handling and use of donated food; integration meetings with employees; training of employees before beginning their activities; visits to suppliers ; reset the time windows for each donor; new layout proposed for the food bank.

My thesis concerns with a new phenomenon of the ICT industry -- cloud computing. The thesis is based on the fact that requirements of the customers on the cloud may differ, there is a significant difference between requirements of individuals and institutions (SMB, large companies or public institutions). In this regard, the thesis differentiates the cloud services for private and institutional use. The theoretical part of the thesis concerns with the definition of basic terms and history of cloud computing. Further, I define the cloud distribution model and its segmentation according to the method of deployment. The security represents another important factor, as it is the most important factor for the decision making on the transition to the cloud. Finally, there are other factors such as legal aspects, change of business processes, audit, governance and future development of cloud computing. The practical part concerns with complex analysis of the cloud market offer via cloud providers and its complex monitoring. As already mentioned, I differentiate the market offer for private and institutional use. The analysis of advantages and disadvantages of individual's and company's transition to the cloud and comparison of specific requirements of individuals and companies are another outcomes from this analysis.

This essay deal with implementation of the Incident management as one of the possible means to minimize risks and losses arising from failures in the organization’s infrastructure and inaccessibility of their "business-critical" applications. It focuses primarily on the organization focused on electronic commerce.

Network management is a problem that faces designers and operators of any type of network. Conventional methods of capacity planning or configuration management are difficult to apply directly to networks that dynamically allocate resources, such as Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM) networks and emerging Internet Protocol (IP) networks employing Differentiated Services (DiffServ). This work shows a method to generically classify traffic in an ATM network such that capacity planning may be possible. These methods are generally applicable to other networks that support dynamically allocated resources. In this research, Call Detail Records (CDRs) captured from a ¡§live¡¨ ATM network were successfully classified into three traffic categories. The traffic categories correspond to three different video speeds (1152 kbps, 768 kbps, and 384 kbps) in the network. Further statistical analysis was used to characterize these traffic categories and found them to fit deterministic distributions. The statistical analysis methods were also applied to several different network planning and management functions. Three specific potential applications related to network management were examined: capacity planning, traffic modeling, and configuration management. / Master of Science

<p>Revenue maximization for network operators is considered as a criterion for resource allocation in wireless cellular networks. A business model encompassing service level agreements between network operators and service providers is presented. Admission control, through price model aware admission policing and service level control, is critical for the provisioning of useful services over a general purpose wireless network. A technical solution consisting of a fast resource scheduler taking into account service requirements and wireless channel properties, a service level controller that provides the scheduler with a reasonable load, and an admission policy to uphold the service level agreements and maximize revenue, is presented.</p><p>Two different types of service level controllers are presented and implemented. One is based on a scalar PID controller, that adjusts the admitted data rates for all active clients. The other one is obtained with linear programming methods, that optimally assign data rates to clients, given their channel qualities and price models.</p><p>Two new scheduling criteria, and algorithms based on them, are presented and evaluated in a simulated wireless environment. One is based on a quadratic criterion, and is implemented through approximative algorithms, encompassing a search based algorithm and two different linearizations of the criterion. The second one is based on statistical measures of the service rates and channel states, and is implemented as an approximation of the joint probability of achieving the delay limits while utilizing the available resources efficiently.</p><p>Two scheduling algorithms, one based on each criterion, are tested in combination with each of the service level controllers, and evaluated in terms of throughput, delay, and computational complexity, using a target test system. Results show that both schedulers can, when feasible, meet explicit throughput and delay requirements, while at the same time allowing the service level controller to maximize revenue by allocating the surplus resources to less demanding services.</p>

Revenue maximization for network operators is considered as a criterion for resource allocation in wireless cellular networks. A business model encompassing service level agreements between network operators and service providers is presented. Admission control, through price model aware admission policing and service level control, is critical for the provisioning of useful services over a general purpose wireless network. A technical solution consisting of a fast resource scheduler taking into account service requirements and wireless channel properties, a service level controller that provides the scheduler with a reasonable load, and an admission policy to uphold the service level agreements and maximize revenue, is presented. Two different types of service level controllers are presented and implemented. One is based on a scalar PID controller, that adjusts the admitted data rates for all active clients. The other one is obtained with linear programming methods, that optimally assign data rates to clients, given their channel qualities and price models. Two new scheduling criteria, and algorithms based on them, are presented and evaluated in a simulated wireless environment. One is based on a quadratic criterion, and is implemented through approximative algorithms, encompassing a search based algorithm and two different linearizations of the criterion. The second one is based on statistical measures of the service rates and channel states, and is implemented as an approximation of the joint probability of achieving the delay limits while utilizing the available resources efficiently. Two scheduling algorithms, one based on each criterion, are tested in combination with each of the service level controllers, and evaluated in terms of throughput, delay, and computational complexity, using a target test system. Results show that both schedulers can, when feasible, meet explicit throughput and delay requirements, while at the same time allowing the service level controller to maximize revenue by allocating the surplus resources to less demanding services.

In the Internet of Services (IoS) providers and consumers of services engage in business interactions on service marketplaces. Provisioning and consumption of services are regulated by service level agreements (SLA), which are negotiated between providers and consumers. Trading composite services requires the providers to manage the SLAs that are negotiated with the providers of atomic services and the consumers of the composition. The management of SLAs involves the negotiation and renegotiation of SLAs as well as their monitoring during service provisioning. The complexity of this task arises due to the fact that dependencies exist between the different services in a composition. Dependencies between services occur because the complex task of a composition is distributed between atomic services. Thus, the successful provisioning of the composite service depends on its atomic building blocks. At the same time, atomic services depend on other atomic services, e.g. because of data or resource requirements, or time relationships. These dependencies need to be considered for the management of composite service SLAs. This thesis aims at developing a management approach for dependencies between services in service compositions to support SLA management. Information about service dependencies is not explicitly available. Instead it is implicitly contained in the workflow description of a composite service, the negotiated SLAs of the composite service, and as application domain knowledge of experts, which makes the handling of this information more complex. Thus, the dependency management approach needs to capture this dependency information in an explicit way. The dependency information is then used to support SLA management in three ways. First of all dependency information is used during SLA negotiation the to ensure that the different SLAs enable the successful collaboration of the services to achieve the composite service goal. Secondly, during SLA renegotiation dependency information is used to determine which effects the renegotiation has on other SLAs. Finally, dependency information is used during SLA monitoring to determine the effects of detected violations on other services. Based on a literature study and two use cases from the logistics and healthcare domains different types of dependencies were analyzed and classified. The results from this analysis were used as a basis for the development of an approach to analyze and represent dependency information according to the different dependency properties. Furthermore, a lifecycle and architecture for managing dependency information was developed. In an iterative approach the different artifacts were implemented, tested based on two use cases, and refined according to the test results Finally, the prototype was evaluated with regard to detailed test cases and performance measurements were executed. The resulting dependency management approach has four main contributions. Firstly, it represents a holistic approach for managing service dependencies with regard to composite SLA management. It extends existing work by supporting the handling of dependencies between atomic services as well as atomic and composite services at design time and during service provisioning. Secondly, a semi-automatic approach to capturing dependency information is provided. It helps to achieve a higher degree of automation as compared to other approaches. Thirdly, a metamodel for representing dependency information for SLA management is shown. Dependency information is kept separately from SLA information to achieve a better separation of concerns. This facilitates the utilization of the dependency management functionality with different SLA management approaches. Fourthly, a dependency management architecture is presented. The design of the architecture ensures that the components can be integrated with different SLA management approaches. The test case based evaluation of the dependency management approach showed its feasibility and correct functioning in two different application domains. Furthermore, the performance evaluation showed that the automated dependency management tasks are executed within the range of milliseconds for both use cases. The dependency management approach is suited to support the different SLA management tasks. It supports the work of composite service providers by facilitating the SLA management of complex service compositions.

Le Cloud Computing est de plus en plus reconnu comme une nouvelle façon d'utiliser, à la demande, les services de calcul, de stockage et de réseau d'une manière transparente et efficace. Dans cette thèse, nous abordons le problème d'ordonnancement de workflows sur les infrastructures distribuées hétérogènes du Cloud Computing. Les approches d'ordonnancement de workflows existantes dans le Cloud se concentrent principalement sur l'optimisation biobjectif du makespan et du coût. Dans cette thèse, nous proposons des algorithmes d'ordonnancement de workflows basés sur des métaheuristiques. Nos algorithmes sont capables de gérer plus de deux métriques de QoS (Quality of Service), notamment, le makespan, le coût, la fiabilité, la disponibilité et l'énergie dans le cas de ressources physiques. En outre, ils traitent plusieurs contraintes selon les exigences spécifiées dans le SLA (Service Level Agreement). Nos algorithmes ont été évalués par simulation en utilisant (1) comme applications: des workflows synthétiques et des workflows scientifiques issues du monde réel ayant des structures différentes; (2) et comme ressources Cloud: les caractéristiques des services de Amazon EC2. Les résultats obtenus montrent l'efficacité de nos algorithmes pour le traitement de plusieurs QoS. Nos algorithmes génèrent une ou plusieurs solutions dont certaines surpassent la solution de l'heuristique HEFT sur toutes les QoS considérées, y compris le makespan pour lequel HEFT est censé donner de bons résultats. / Cloud Computing is increasingly recognized as a new way to use on-demand, computing, storage and network services in a transparent and efficient way. In this thesis, we address the problem of workflows scheduling on distributed heterogeneous infrastructure of Cloud Computing. The existing workflows scheduling approaches mainly focus on the bi-objective optimization of the makespan and the cost. In this thesis, we propose news workflows scheduling algorithms based on metaheuristics. Our algorithms are able to handle more than two QoS (Quality of Service) metrics, namely, makespan, cost, reliability, availability and energy in the case of physical resources. In addition, they address several constraints according to the specified requirements in the SLA (Service Level Agreement). Our algorithms have been evaluated by simulations. We used (1) synthetic workflows and real world scientific workflows having different structures, for our applications; and (2) the features of Amazon EC2 services for our Cloud. The obtained results show the effectiveness of our algorithms when dealing multiple QoS metrics. Our algorithms produce one or more solutions which some of them outperform the solution produced by HEFT heuristic over all the QoS considered, including the makespan for which HEFT is supposed to give good results.

Cloud computing has become a prominent paradigm to offer on-demand services for softwares, infrastructures and platforms. Cloud services are contracted by a service level agreement (SLA) between a cloud service provider (CSP) and a cloud service user (CSU) which contains service definitions, quality of service (QoS) parameters, guarantees and obligations. Cloud service providers mostly offer SLAs in descriptive format which is not directly consumable by a machine or a system. The SLA written in natural language may impede the utility of rapid elasticity in a cloud service. Manual management of SLAs with growing usage of cloud services can be a challenging, erroneous and tedious task especially for the CSUs acquiring multiple cloud services. The necessity of automating the complete SLA life cycle (which includes SLA description in machine readable format, negotiation, monitoring and management) becomes imminent due to complex requirements for the precise measurement of QoS parameters. Current approaches toward automating the complete SLA life cycle, lack in standardization, completeness and applicability to cloud services. Automation of different phases of the SLA life cycle (e.g. negotiation, monitoring and management) is dependent on the availability of a machine readable SLA. In this work, a structural specification for the SLAs in cloud computing (S3LACC in short) is presented which is designed specifically for cloud services, covers complete SLA life cycle and conforms with the available standards. A time efficient SLA negotiation technique is accomplished (based on the S3LACC) for concurrently negotiating with multiple CSPs. After successful negotiation process, next leading task in the SLA life cycle is to monitor the cloud services for ensuring the quality of service according to the agreed SLA. A distributed monitoring approach for the cloud SLAs is presented, in this work, which is suitable for services being used at single or multiple locations. The proposed approach reduces the number of communications of SLA violations to a monitoring coordinator by eliminating the unnecessary communications. The presented work on the complete SLA life cycle automation is evaluated and validated with the help of use cases, experiments and simulations.