7th International Conference on Knowledge Management in Organizations: Service and Cloud Computing

Nowadays, folksonomies are currently the simplest way to classify information inWeb 2.0. However, such folksonomies increase continuously their amount of information without any centralized control, complicating the knowledge representation. We analyse a method to group resources of collaborative-social tagging systems in semantic categories. It is able to automatically create the classification categories to represent the current knowledge and to self-adapt to the changes of the folksonomies, classifying the resources under categories and creating/deleting them. As opposed to current proposals that require the re-evaluation of the whole folksonomy to maintain updated the categories, our method is an incremental aggregation technique which guarantees its adaptation to highly dynamic systems without requiring a full reassessment of the folksonomy.

Software Engineering (SE) uses different theories to empower its practices. One such theory is Knowledge Management (KM), which provides an important conceptual heritage. Our proposal establishes emerging concepts that enrich SE from KM. All these concepts are in between knowledge and software, hence we call them Softknowledge (SK), y Hardknowledge (HK); they constitute Knowledgeware (KW). In this paper we emphasize the intentionality that pertains to these concepts, which is a fundamental characteristic for the development, maintenance, and evolution of software. Additionally, we propose a nurturing environment based on the present proposal.

Effective use of knowledge in organisations would typically lead to improved organizational performance. Organisations that practice and leverage organizational knowledge through integration, innovation and sharing of lessons learned will continue to improve and strengthen the organisation’s operation. The ecosystem approach described in this paper centred on the premise that knowledge is individualised information enriched through the process of learning, then shared and applied to practical situations. To capture better knowledge management, a collaborative knowledge management framework is used to examine the positions of knowledge management in an organisation. To highlight the complex and heterogeneous nature of knowledge management, a set of practices aimed to enhance collaboration is presented as holistic approach toward improving practical learning environments. In addition, a set of actionable knowledge management strategies to improve the relationships among the components interacting within each organisational ecosystem can be recommended as a result of using the framework.

The Knowledge Management (KM) literature is reviewed with a focus on theory, finding a core issue in the lack of a widely accepted and understood definition of knowledge. Theories are categorised on the bisecting continua of personal vs. organizational knowledge, and reified knowledge vs. knowledge as social action. It is argued that a fresh approach based on the Discourse Psychology framework, and its research tool of discourse analysis, would shed new light on the primary issues. Social interaction – and therefore, language – is considered by many KM theorists to be essential to knowledge sharing and creation, yet language has not been the locus of investigation. DP views language as the site of social action, and reality construction. Consequently, a study of talk in interaction is likely to reveal more about the nature of knowledge and in particular its psychological formulation, with implications for its management.

Ensemble pruning is an important issue in the field of ensemble learning. Diversity is a key criterion to determine how the pruning process has been done and measure what result has been derived. However, there is few formal definitions of diversity yet. Hence, three important factors that should be further considered while designing a pruning criterion is presented, and then an effective definition of diversity is proposed. The experimental results have validated that the given pruning criterion could single out the subset of classifiers that show better performance in the process of hill-climbing search, compared with other definitions of diversity and other criteria.

In this paper, the author discusses an exploratory study to provide IT support for field experience management using a process-oriented field experience knowledge management framework. This framework is structured around three sequential non-lineal phases: (1) before: preparing, searching and placement; (2) during: Supervising, tracking progress and providing feedback; and (3) after: Reflecting, assessment and reporting. Based on the proposed framework, the author constructed a knowledge-centered prototype system to support the field experience tracking and administration process. The paper also presents an evaluative performance of the system and discusses the implications. The results show that the proposed framework is valuable and can be used to guide and facilitate knowledge-center support system development in the area of field experience management.

The abundance of sentiment-carrying user-generated content renders automated cross-language informationmonitoring tools crucial for today’s businesses. In order to facilitate cross-language sentiment analysis, we propose to compare the sentiment conveyed by unstructured text across languages through universal star ratings for intended sentiment. We demonstrate that the way natural language reveals people’s intended sentiment differs across languages. The results of our experiments with respect to modeling this relation for both Dutch and English by means of a monotone increasing step function mainly suggest that language-specific sentiment scores can separate universal classes of intended sentiment from one another to a limited extent.

This study analyses organisational knowledge integration processes from a multi-level and systemic perspective, with particular reference to the case of Fujitsu. A conceptual framework for knowledge integration is suggested focusing on team-building capability, capturing and utilising individual tacit knowledge, and communication networks for integrating dispersed specialist knowledge required in the development of new products and services. The research highlights that knowledge integration occurring in the innovation process is a result of knowledge exposure, its distribution and embodiment and finally its transfer, which leads to innovation capability and competitive advantage in firm.

Manufacturers and operators of complex service systems are increasingly focused on customer-centric strategies. Examples include solution-based contracts, which provide more holistic approaches closely linking design, manufacture, use and reuse functions within a firm, or across a network of firms and suppliers, to deliver tailored value. Solutions deliver broader benefits that exceed the rewards of traditional transactional service delivery. Trends from the defence industry illustrate how innovative business models are applied in complex service systems to adapt and apply the knowledge resident in the firm and external networks. This paper seeks to share insights into understanding collaborative service approaches as firms adapt to changing market forces by retooling their priorities, focusing their resources, and adopting strategies driving new business models.

The challenge in service project management is gathering business requirements from stakeholders. Requirements are often vague because it is difficult for customers to articulate their needs before they see the end product. This is especially difficult when different stakeholders are involved. Only when projects are built on trust can they work. This paper studies the importance of trust in the initiation of university project.

This paper critically evaluates the impact and consequences of TechnoPhobia and TechnoStress (Rosen and Weil 1995) on public and corporate ICT policy makers. This research is set in the context of government ministries in Malta and performed by Aquilina in 2010/2011, as part of his MSc Dissertation. It is of particular significance in indicating how little has changed in the perceptions of ICT users surveyed as to their levels of acceptance and trust or distrust in ICT in their work and recreation, using the CARS and GATS scales of Rosen and Weil. It intimates that the problem may have got worse. The fact that 56% of the respondents in Malta showed some degree of technophobia should be of particular concern to policy makers. The consequences of Technophobia need to be incorporated into the policy making forum to ensure more effective ICT systems are developed.

Even though many Knowledge Management initiatives are already in operation, most do not have the right approach when it comes to capturing tacit knowledge. This paper brings to light how social, cultural and organizational paradigms can be infused within a KM initiative to capture tacit and new knowledge. This research paper also brings to light a holistic approach to investigate, analyze, probe and document an activity system for a KM initiative. This case study based investigation uses Delphi techniques to elicit responses from experts from the lens of Activity Theory (AT). It probes into supervision of projects as a case on point to demonstrate how tacit knowledge could be elicited from a team of supervisors.

The aim of this paper is to explain how we can achieve and integrate customer knowledge into the software engineering process in multi-disciplined product development, through developing dynamic capabilities. According to service dominant logic, knowledge assets are key drivers in creating competitive advantage for organizations. This research will provide significant new information about the role of customer knowledge in value creation for the software engineering process in the machinery industry. As the result of the research, a model for acquisition and use of customer knowledge in value creation of the software engineering process is created and guidelines produced.

This paper examines the factors that affect the use of enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems in an e-commerce environment after they have been adopted. The model presented here extends the technology acceptance model (TAM) to examine how IT trust, training content, and the quality of the system interface influence the extent to which knowledge about using an ERP system is applied after it has been learnt during a training program. The model extends research on ERP utilization by proposing a set of variables which have not been explored in depth in studies on the use of ERP systems, especially in the context of e- commerce.

This article briefly described as collaborative virtual tools contribute to the generation of knowledge in project management. First we will describe what are virtual collaborative tools, what are the benefits they bring to managers and other project team members, what their main characteristics and main categories. Thereafter there will be a recount of some of the technological tools used in project management and the impact that they cause in the organization as well as successful completion of projects. Finally, we show the evolution of technological infrastructure in the world has caused a steady movement towards these systems forcing organizations to make better use of these resources, creating virtual learning environments, communities, collaborative software and media optimized for the most out of these and generate knowledge that will be leveraged in project management to convey the experiences and other situations that can be controlled.

Businesses have recognized that knowledge constitutes a valuable intangible asset, and currently they have access to an extensive pool of knowledge, from the skills and experience of the workforce and also their understanding of customers’ needs. The challenge’s for the businesses are not just processing these big data but also dealing with company’s cultural issues that allow knowledge sharing and information exchange. Sharing of knowledge constitutes a major challenge in the field of knowledge management because some employees tend to resist sharing what they know with the rest of the organisation. It takes the right environment to create an effective knowledge sharing program and for such an environment to be nurtured, organisations need to look inwards at the type of culture they promote before investing in knowledge sharing tools. The purpose of this study was to analyse the various factors affecting the knowledge sharing process in organisations and the use of innovative social business tools to promote knowledge sharing in organisations. A global survey was conducted for this study relating to the willingness to share knowledge, and the tools available for sharing knowledge. Also, a practical case study was conducted on a UK based company.

This article shows the connection and interrelation between complexity theory and knowledge management. It is planned to find mechanisms to communicate and share knowledge efficiently, improving knowledge management in a complex system such as the development software factories. As a result, it propose a model of knowledge management, taking into account notions of complexity theory applied to a development system software factories, where normal development involves different forms of complexity, which must be managed properly to help solve. Of course, the results of the application can be seen in the medium term best practices and lessons learned.

In this article, a new metrics to estimate project development time is proposed. The approach is based on business process models. The estimates are divided into four categories: process, screen, integration and service. They are quantified in process points. The project must be modeled as a business process, the four estimates must be calculated and added to obtain the final project complexity. It is a faster method to evaluate the design of complex software systems.

The Higher Education Institutions, HEI are the natural space where the ethos of knowledge can be developed and the Intellectual Capital, IK can be accumulated. It’s no secret the inadequacy of the Management Information Systems, MIS to incorporate knowledge. In fact is shared by many authors that well over half the market value is explained by the IK in companies of the Third Millennium. Traditional systems do not account for the IK and only estimate the book values vs. market values when selling focused on negotiation processes. On the other hand, there are already quite a few financial models of the knowledge economy that considers the IK. For the universities is a critical issue in the way of the Competitiveness of Higher Education. Our initiative EIDOS constituted unconventional ideas that have not had an audience in the context of Colombia. Now beginning to break through what an open space is required with basic units in the enterprise architecture of the HEI focused on innovation; This was stated by the Government Plan 2010-2014, in this country as an national strategy. These new architectures must be defined and supported in order to facilitate the stream of information and knowledge with new sources of generation, especially those where the IK did not exist. It begins to think that IK is the basis of sustainability and financial governance. Knowledge Engineering (KE) maturity level is inderway. As background it should be mentioned that this research originated to facilitate the use of development methodologies, information systems and evolve them to the incorporation of layers of knowledge for an Intelligent Management Information IMIS, to the various organizational and technological changes that occur in building new systems to meet customer requirements in improvement of processes, new demands of companies in the Knowledge Society and basically make the intelligent performance of the firm. Our research effort represents ongoing work with several University projects and unpublished graduate works and also consulting works for institutions in Colombia. In the FESSANJOSE the model has evolved to our proposal of social innovation Leontief Model that incorporate the knowledge sector. The KE methodology is shortly presented in this paper has been an attempt for reducing the complexity involved: is part of that effort and has not obeyed to a large-scale project with good funding. They have been serene developments that we want to share with the academic community. We describe an attempt to formalize a KE methodology in 8 steps which are presented in detail, the mix of ideas coming from both Engineering and Management we tried to integrate in this construct. The full method can be read in the 2nd chapter titled "Analytical Models for Tertiary Education by Propaedeutic Cycles Applying Knowledge Engineering and Knowledge Management".

Technology has altered the way we learn and work. This study hopes to help business leaders and corporations recognize the crucial role of these societal-changing technologies that link people to information in the digital age. This study explored the effect of technology on organizational learning from the perspective of connectivism. Practices of connectivism studied include social software technologies and knowledge management practices. Quantitative survey question-naires were sent to 301 companies in the computer industry across Taiwan, resulting in 80 valid responses. Hierarchical regression was used to test study hypotheses. Hypotheses on the direct effects among innovative corporate culture, practices of connectivism and organizational learning were supported. Additionally, companies that were younger or in more remote locations were found to have higher motivation to innovate, learn and adopt new technologies formally.

This study analyzes how an apparent paradoxical combination of managerial practices and organizational resources affects the knowledge-creation capability of organizations. The propositions developed are theoretically supported and for the greatest part empirically validated, thus transcending the conventional understanding and generating insightful perspectives and practical implications for both academicians and practitioners.

This paper gives a general vision of the knowledge areas that compound the software engineering according to the IEEE SWEBOK (Software Engineering body of knowledge) guide, and starting at that point proposed a pedagogic strategy, to be applied as a cathedra complement at the Pedagogic and Technologic University of Colombia (UPTC), due the knowledge areas proposed at SWEBOK provide an appropriate structure that adapts itself to the teaching-learning process at the Systems and Computation engineering college. The strategy that square up the educational objectives of Bloom’s Taxonomy cognitive domain is designed and later evaluated by an advisor and further applied to an study group belonging to the Software Engineering study line; taking the results as a base to define the viability of this propose to be extended to another knowledge areas proffered by SWEBOK guide.

Outsourcing has garnered significant attention regarding the perceived benefits or repercussions. Our research investigates the specific impact of outsourcing ‘on-site’ IT user support provision considered by many organizations to be an ideal candidate for outsourcing. We found that the cost implications of the outsourcing exercise provided no real benefit in comparison with in-house staff provision. Notably, moreover, the exclusion of end-users in the process had significant impact on the outsourced agent. We provide insight of real world practice to inform current and further practice and propose two considerations that should be addressed aimed at improving benefits to be realized.

With the rapid growth of the Internet, it is much easier to access the web-based technology. The web-based technology has also dramatically influenced our life. Moreover, many institutions, including the government of Taiwan, required that their employees are capable of using technological tools to fulfill their job requirements. Public organizations in Taiwan are now widely utilizing web-based learning techniques to improve the quality of human capital and boost the productivities of public employees; the situation is the same in education field. Many previous studies showed that using the web-based technology efficiently enhances learners’ performances, attitudes and motivation toward on-line learning. Therefore, with the trend of using web-based technology on learning and teaching, numerous education/training institutes and companies have dedicated great efforts and large amount of money to advance on-line learning programs for users. However, while many studies mentioned about the learners’, teachers’ and employees’ acceptance toward on-line learning, few studies have reported the point of view from educational administrators, the crucial group of people who make the educational decisions. Therefore, the purposes of this study are using the theory of planned behavior and theory of reasoned action as background models to investigate the effect of the participants’ subjective norms on their use intention toward on-line learning. The participants in this study were 176 educational administrators in Department of Education, Taipei City Government. A survey questionnaire was administered to understand their subjective norms, including “superior influence,” “peer influence,” and “regulations.” The results demonstrate that peer influence has the most significant effects on participants’ use intention, followed by superior influence. However, regulations have no significant effect on their use intention. Specifically, from the results of correlation analysis, there is a positive relationship between peer influence and their use intention toward on-line learning, however, a negative relationship has shown between superior influence and use intention toward on-line learning. In other words, it seems that the participants are influenced by their peers on using on-line learning, thus expressing higher use intention. Contrary to the peer influence, the participants are less influenced or get discouraged by their superiors on using on-line learning.

The study aims to investigate factors that motivate Business and Management Cluster’s students to take secondary technician certification of their majors. With the literature review, a questionnaire survey was adopted. In total, 878 questionnaires were sent out and a valid response rate was 80.30%. After collecting the entire questionnaires, statistical software packages were used to analyze the collected data. The results showed that teacher’s instructions and students’ increasing sense of achievement and self-confidence by obtaining certification were the two main motivations students hold. Moreover, private school students’ are much more motivated to obtain certifications than public school students. Based on the results, several suggestions are made as references for schools, teachers, parents and students.

The last few years have seen an enormous growth of interest in e-portfolios and the benefits they can bring to learners. While it is generally agreed that e-portfolios have great potential to engage students and promote deep learning, the research that has been conducted to date focuses very little on student perceptions of value of the e-portfolio for their learning. If students do not agree or wish to use the e-portfolio as an integral part of their educational experience, then the potential impact the e-portfolio have on learning will not be realised. This paper describes the development of an e portfolio system to promote reflective skills for engineering students in a university in Malaysia. The Activity Theory is used as a lens to explain the reasons for the failed adoption of the e portfolio system.

Growing popularity of Learning Management Systems (LMS) coupled with setting up of variety of rubrics to evaluate methods of Learning, Teaching and Assessment Strategies (LTAS) by various accreditation boards has compelled many establishments/universities to run all their courses through one or the other forms of LMS. This has paved way to gather large amount of data on a day to day basis in an incremental way, making LMS data suitable for incremental learning through data mining techniques. The data mining technique which is employed in this research is

clustering

. This paper focuses on challenges involved in the instantaneous knowledge extraction from such an environment where streams of heterogeneous log records are generated every moment. In obtaining the overall knowledge from such LMS data, we have proposed a novel idea in which instead of reprocessing the entire data from the beginning, we processed only the recent chunk of data (incremental part) and append the obtained knowledge to the knowledge extracted from previous chunk(s). Obtained results when compared with teachers handling the modules/subjects match exactly with the expected results.

Despite progress made through research and debate, there is still no universal consensus on how best to manage quality within Higher Education Institution (HEI). The key reason is that quality is a complex and multi-faceted construct, particularly in HEI. Quality of service offered cannot be directly observed before consumption. This makes comparing universities extremely difficult, or practically impossible. The aim of this study is to develop a conceptual framework for measuring service quality in HEI by applying the emerging concept of service dominant logic. This paper provides a new paradigm for the measurement of service quality in Higher education based on the emerging discipline of service science. It describes a framework that we have proposed that can be used to measure the quality of service in HEI. The framework is developed through the co-creation of value between students and the staffs.

This article presents the results of one of the first phases of the doctoral thesis proposal, which includes the study of technologies that are part of the paradigm of Web 2.0, to propose a model of software development with BPM approach 2.0. The researcher [1] points out that it would help analysts to understand business requirements and apply them directly in the process by using existing IT systems. The research involves areas such as software engineering, specifically all that has to do with the business process management and Web 2.0 technologies. These paradigms promote the creation of business management applications focused on the modeling, execution, administration and monitoring of business processes and a new generation of communication services which are based on the social web.

In recent years, with the growth of Internet technology and virtual community, the users in virtual community not only play as the information receiver but also very important role to provide information. However, information overload has becoming a very serious problem and how to find information efficiently is also an important issue. In this research, we believe that users in a virtual community may affect each other, especially those with high influence. Therefore, we propose an architecture to discover the key users in a virtual community. By applying the architecture, it would be a very efficient and low cost approach. In the architecture, social networks analysis and visualization technique will be the main methods to discover the key users. In this paper, we also present an experiment to demonstrate the proposed method and the analysis results.

Internet has been running into the era of Web 3.0 equipped with the development of semantic technology. Therefore, how to manage the enterprise knowledge that suits Web 3.0 becomes an urgent problem. In this paper, we first summarize the evolution of Internet and describe the feature of Web 3.0. After analyzing the practice of linked data applied in Web 3.0, we propose a new framework of enterprise knowledge management system combining the theory of linked data and the close loop of knowledge management. Moreover, we analyze each layer’s function in the framework and discuss the implementation of the knowledge publish layer in detail. As a remarkable result, the proposed enterprise knowledge management system can extend the knowledge sharing to a new level, and reduce the cost of enterprise collaboration caused by heterogeneous data as well.

Knowledge is increasingly being recognized as a vital organizational resource that provides competitive advantage (Davenport, T. & Prusak, L. 1998, Edvinsson, L. & Malone, M. 1997., Stewart, T. 1997, Argote, L. and P. Ingram 2000, Choo 1998). Managing knowledge assets can be a challenge for organization, specially their external Knowledge like their customer base information. The use of information technology (IT) in knowledge management (KM), is an essential consideration for any company wishing to take advantage of modern technologies to manage their knowledge assets. IT tools have been recently created to listen and learn from customers in the public and private social networks. This paper presents research about KM IT tools and social monitoring tools, a survey and interviews have been conducted to identify the technologies that are currently used to manage customer knowledge in Chilean companies and how valuable is this Knowledge for companies. A questionnaire was distributed among Chilean organizations in order to obtain general data about the level of use and the benefits of using such tools. This approach was supplemented by interviews to reveal richer data about the nature of IT for Customer KM (CKM), in organizations. The research revealed that conventional technologies, such as the telephone, are used more frequently, than more radical IT tools, such as social CRM and social listening tools, but great importance and attention to this new tools is taking place. In Chilean organizations, the potential benefits of IT for Customer KM, are not fully exploited and many have expressed a need for greater implementation of social analysis tools and Customer Knowledge Management practices.

Many knowledge services have been developed as a matching platform for knowledge demanders and providers. However, most of these knowledge services have a common drawback that they cannot provide a list of experts corresponding to the knowledge demanders’ need. Knowledge demanders have to post their questions in a public area and then wait patiently until corresponding knowledge providers appear. In order to facilitate knowledge demanders to acquire knowledge, this study proposes a knowledge service system based on Wikipedia to actively inform potential knowledge providers on behalf of knowledge demanders. This study also developed a knowledge activity map system used for the knowledge service system to identify Wikipedians’ knowledge domains. The experimental evaluation results show that the knowledge service system is acceptable by leader users on Wikipedia, in which their domain knowledge can be identified and represented on their knowledge activity maps.

In this paper, we propose a new research model that describes why users leave social network services. Multiple models and theories were proposed in the past that describe why users join in on innovation, become active users of new IT solutions and adopt technology. But no concise model has been established that explicitly focuses on why users withdraw from social network services – or web based technology in general. The goal of this paper is to develop, based on established theories of information systems research, a research model that provides a predictive set of rules for analyzing user withdrawal from social network services.

As the popularity and the commercial potential of social networks such as LinkedIn and Facebook increase, we present a framework that aims to reuse social networks data within a customer relationship management (CRM) application. The framework has been implemented in

LinkedInFinder

that pulls data from LinkedIn into the Microsoft Dynamics CRM system. Our proof-of-concept implementation demonstrates the use of the proposed framework, based on a use case to find seconddegree connectionswithin one’s network that work at a specific company of interest. A survey amongst target users suggests that the application is useful and adequately designed for the intended use.

This paper discusses the potential of emerging service science with engineering applications. First the definition and classification of service for engineering discipline are detailed and elaborated. Based on that, this paper focuses on the potential application of service science in the Construction Industry namely Building Information Modeling (BIM). Elaborate discussion on the service value of BIM leads to suggestion for further research in specific areas namely the interaction between experts from the world’s major BIM player in order to improve the implementation of BIM.

E-services have significantly changed the way of doing business in recent years. We can, however, observe poor use of these services. There is a large gap between supply and actual e-services usage. This is why we started a project to provide an environment that will encourage the use of e-services. In the paper we propose an idea of intelligent e-services platform. In addition to established possibilities of searching (e.g. keyword searching, manual classified knowledge browsing), we also propose our own original approach. The ontology and algorithm for proposing appropriate e-services are described in the paper. We use expert knowledge in form of question-answer pairs. It is used by the algorithm to dynamically guide a dialog with user. Intelligently selected sequence of questions is used to suggest the e-service that could help user at a given situation. Ontologies and semantic web technologies are used heavily therefore.

This article examines Project Failure in the IT Sector, specifically regarding projects being undertaken in organisations where project tasks clash for resources with concurrent regular ongoing “Business as Usual” IT operations. Projects also clash due to the project altering the organisational “status quo” in many other areas of the firm which are also causes of Project Failure which are examined. A background theoretical review of current Service Science thinking is undertaken, statement of current issues is made and then suggestions for areas of further research to attempt to address the issues from a Service Science perspective are discussed.

In this paper, we present a layered cyber-attack detection system with semantics and context capabilities. The described approach has been implemented in a prototype system which uses semantic information about related attacks to infer all possible suspicious network activities from connections between hosts. The relevant attacks generated by semantic techniques are forwarded to context filters that use attack context profiles and host contexts to filter out irrelevant attacks. The prototype system is evaluated on the KDD 1999 intrusion detection dataset, where the experimental results have shown competitive precision and recall values of the system compared with previous approaches.

In the following paper we will describe the work developed on a collaborative and component or modular based methodology for native multi-platform development. This investigation work is the continuation of a previous version, for which we adapted to support development of web intelligent projects for various devices as well as using native context development in each device.

Creating mobile applications that are accepted by users is critical for a successful business. This article presents a user-centric approach for developing applications. In the theoretical part, we will present some background information about the three analytic tools that were used with this approach. In the practical part, these analytic tools will be practically applied on a case study for a mobile application. First, the three analytic tools are practically applied and after identifying use cases, the application will be implemented. The application consists of two parts: server and client. The server is based on Java EE technology and the client is based on the Android platform.

Cloud computing has been introduced as a tool for improving IT proficiency and business responsiveness for organizations as it delivers flexible hardware and software services as well as providing an array of fundamentally systematized IT processes. Despite its many advantages, cloud computing security has been a major concern for organizations that are making the transition towards usage of this technology. In this paper, we focus on improving cloud computing security by managing and isolating shared network resources in bridge-mode hypervisors.

Service management at commodity goods retailers requires various kinds of strategic knowledge. This paper focuses on the (dis)advantages of mileage point and discount services. To uncover the characteristics of the two strategies, we are developing an agent-based simulator to analyze the behaviors of competing retailing stores and their customers. The retailer agents adaptively increase or decrease sales promotion of mileage point service and discounting based on their experiences and strategies to acquire customers. Customer agents, on the other hand, make a decision to choose one of the two retailers to repeatedly purchase daily commodities based on customer types and utilities. To explore the better strategies of retailers, we have conducted intensive simulation experiments. Our computational results have shown that the emergence of retailors’ cooperative behaviors and their stable relations strongly depends on to what extent the retailers decide the discounting rather than mileage point strategy at the very first stages.

In the recent years, a new computing model, known as Cloud Computing, has emerged to react to the explosive growth of the number of devices connected to Internet. Cloud Computing is centered on the user and offers an efficient, secure and elastically scalable way of providing and acquiring services. Likewise, Ambient Intelligence (AmI) is also an emerging paradigm based on ubiquitous computing that proposes new ways of interaction between humans and machines, making technology adapt to the users’ necessities. One of the most important aspects in AmI is the use of context-aware technologies such as Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN) to perceive stimuli from both the users and the environment. In this regard, this paper presents Cloud-IO, a Cloud Computing platform for the fast integration and deployment of services over WSNs.

This article presents a proximity detection prototype that will be included in the future in an integral system primarily oriented to facilitate the labor integration of people with disabilities. The main goal of the prototype is to detect the proximity of a person to a computer using ZigBee technology and then, to personalize its workplace according to his user’s profile. The system has been developed as an open MultiAgent System architecture using the agent’s platform PANGEA, a Platform for Automatic coNstruction of orGanizations of intElligent Agents.

The performance of the algorithms is determined by two elements: efficiency and effectiveness. In order to improve these elements, statistical information and visualization are key features to analyze and understand the significant factors that affect the algorithm performance. However, the development of automated tools for this purpose is difficult. In this paper a visual diagnosis tool named VisTHAA, which provides researchers statistical and visual information about instances and algorithms, is proposed. Besides, VisTHAA allows researchers to introduce characterization measurements, make algorithm comparisons with a non-parametric test and visualize the search space ruggedness and the behavior of the algorithm. Due to the above, in this study we used VisTHAA as a tool for improving the efficiency of a reference algorithm in the literature. In the study case, the experimental results showed that through visual diagnosis it was possible to increment the algorithm’s efficiency to 93% without a considerable loss of effectiveness.

Nowadays there are lots of predictive services for several domains such as stock market and bookmakers. The value delivered by these services relies on the quality of their predictions. This paper presents QuPreSS, a general framework which measures predictive service quality and guides the selection of the most accurate predictive service. To do so, services are monitored and their predictions are compared over time by means of forecast verification with observations. A systematic literature review was performed to design a service-oriented framework architecture that fits into the current body of knowledge. The service-oriented nature of the framework makes it extensible and interoperable, being able to integrate existing services regardless their heterogeneity of platforms and languages. Finally, we also present an instantiation of the generic framework architecture for the weather forecast domain, freely available at http://gessi.lsi.upc. edu/qupress/.

Health tourism is an emerging sector in many countries, where developing economies find an opportunity to grow by providing quality medical services at competitive prices. The proposed model is applied to Knowledge Management and is also based on Medical Tourism from the perspective of Information and Communications Technology – ICT. This model represents a fundamental tool for achieving competitive tourism worldwide and for improving decision-making in the industry, since the fundamental weaknesses of such an industry are related to information-wise aspects, value and reliability when transferring knowledge. This management model provides a guide to achieve these objectives through the establishment of tools for its implementation.

As the enhancement of Information Technology (IT) in various management fields escalates, the realization of knowledge management (KM) concept is considered as significant. This concept can be applied in considering information privacy as a component in designing a computerized system. Consequently, this paper proposes the adoption of explicit and tacit knowledge concepts in identifying the privacy of information components in order to construct a secured electronic medical record (EMR) system. A preliminary investigation involving interviews with a selected group of hospital information system (HIS) developers has been conducted earlier on. The findings of this study revealed four important components to be factored in any privacy preservation framework for HIS. They are namely, legislation, ethical, technology and cultural. By applying the KM concept into these four components, it can further derive more systematic guidelines in order to achieve the privacy preservation of information. Nevertheless, further research must be developed as to yield a more inclusive guideline in designing an EMR system that is reliable, specifically in addressing the need of securing patient’s personal medical information privacy.

Cloud Computing is a new computational paradigm which has attracted a lot of interest within the business and research community. Its objective is to integrate a wide amount of heterogeneous resources in an online way to provide services under demand to different types of users, which are liberated from the details of the inner infrastructure, just concentrating on their request of resources over the net. Its main features include an elastic resource configuration and therefore a suitable framework for addressing scalability in an optimal way. From the different scenarios in which Cloud Computing could be applied, its use in Business Intelligence and DataMining in enterprises delivers the highest expectations. The main aim is to extract knowledge of the current working of the business, and therefore to be able to anticipate certain critical operations, such as those based on sales data, fraud detection or the analysis of the clients’ behavior. In this work, we give an overview of the current state of the structure of Cloud Computing for applications on Business Intelligence and DataMining.We provide details of the layers that are needed to develop such a system in different levels of abstraction, that is, from the underlying hardware platforms to the software resources available to implement the applications. Finally, we present some examples of approaches from the field of Data Mining that had been migrated to the Cloud Computing paradigm.

In this paper we present a job coordination service for distributed applications being executed in a Hadoop cluster based on the use of a RDF backed triple space and a RESTful web services interface. The system provides an efficient and simple coordination mechanism to resolve data dependencies between applications and it can be used at the same time as a rich source of information about the state and activity of the cluster that can be processed to build additional services and resources.

Interoperability is one of the main elements affecting the adoption of a technology by businesses.Interoperability in the Cloud is crucial in the sense that it can guaranty inter-cloud communications between heterogeneous platforms. This paper identifies different aspect of interoperability in the Cloud. Moreover, it discusses Distributed Infrastructure architecture as a base for Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) model. The authors split ESB into different layers to increase the flexibility of the framework. This paper extends the concept of ESB to build a Cloud service model that facilitates secure interactions between different Cloud platforms. The proposed architecture is to use service repository and registry mechanisms to enhance flexibility and portability of the model.

The aim of this paper is to compare approaches for value creation and the role of knowledge in these processes. The framework for the value creation process shows the role of knowledge in different phases of this process. Knowledge is compared in each of the individual phases of the process and also between case companies. There is identified knowledge for marketing strategy. The methodology involves three single case studies from which data are derived and analyzed. The analysis shows that the framework for the value creation process can be used as an analytical tool for value overview in different phases and there is a need for different approaches to improve business. Based on the analyzed problems, proposed recommendations for improvement are made. These recommendations are based on the Principles of Blue Ocean Strategy. The Blue Ocean Strategy is considered a better approach to knowledge management in value creation and to the improvement of the companies in question.