As small and medium enterprises move toward cloud computing for their IT operations, they discover that securing their information assets is a challenge. A new set of providers offering fee-based security as a service (SECaaS) has emerged. The SECaaS market is still nascent, and important questions remain if these providers are to be successful. This research uses a system dynamics approach to shed light on the SECaaS market in the context of SECaaS costs, and security threat conditions. The results indicate that consumers are price sensitive but not threat sensitive, and have important implications for SECaaS providers and consumers.

The cloud computing industry is characterized by a small number of dominant providers and a host of small-to-medium providers. As the demand grows, additional providers are expected to enter the market. The need for 24/7 support and competitive pricing allows established providers to maintain defensible industry positions. This paper examines the impact of adopting growth and equilibrium market share strategies by cloud providers. Capacity planning remains a challenging problem given uncertain growth and demand, and providers seeking to pursue different market share strategies must adopt different tactics. Results from a system dynamics simulation indicate that market share growth can be achieved at the cost of overall revenue. A reactive strategy to maintain market share requires more price manipulation, but results in higher overall income. Simulations are conducted for a variety of economic conditions, with a view to providing cloud service providers broad guidance for cloud capacity building strategies.

In recent years, cloud computing has become a popular computing architecture in IT industry. Although information systems research has identified cloud computing as an important driver for cost saving and agility, there is little work that examines the implication of different innovation characteristics on cloud solution quality and eventual cloud diffusion. This research investigates the relationship between several innovation characteristics and the rate of diffusion on cloud computing within the industry. A blended approach is adopted, wherein the decision to adopt is modeled through agent-based simulation, and the characteristics of the innovation are varied through the use of genetic algorithms. Results indicate that the blended approach yields good results under a variety of innovation diffusion scenarios.

Purpose – The aim of this paper is to study the critical role of trust in electronic commerce extensively in the context of establishing initial trust between trading partners. Ongoing trust between partners can quickly be eroded through security or other trust violations. This paper examines whether customers are willing to transact with an eCommerce vendor in light of security and trust violations. Design/methodology/approach – The paper draws upon research in professional trust relationships and adapts it to the e-commerce context to create a process view of trust violation and repair. Using a design science framework, this paper employs agent-based modeling as the simulation technique to study the implications of security and trust violations on the willingness of customers to continue transacting with the vendor. The simulations are conducted for a variety of trust violations and reconciliation actions. Findings – While some of the results are predictable, the key finding for managers is that moderate reconciliation tactics are effective for all cases but the most severe trust violations, where trust is irrevocably broken. This has clear financial implications, particularly in cases where vendors may operate with small margins in competitive markets. Originality/value – Given the increasing push toward mobile and Internet-based commerce, and the large range of possible trust violations and security incidents in online purchases, coupled with increasing competition among vendors, it becomes imperative for vendors to provide effective tactics to repair customer trust violations when they arise.

Managing human resources and skills for information technology (IT) presents a challenging task for executives, more so when new ITs are involved. Lack of familiarity with the technology, the learning curve associated with its incorporation, and the relative paucity of skilled personnel serve to alter the strategies for management of human resources and skills. This paper presents a system dynamics approach for examining alternative strategies for skill management and supporting decisions during the implementation of service-oriented architecture (SOA) in an organization. For projects involving SOA, the initial planning and implementation of the underlying architecture entail higher costs and slower delivery of initial SOA applications. The use of appropriate IT human resource management strategies for SOA projects is critical for successful SOA implementation. The complexity associated with the fluctuating demand for IT skills, coupled with the need for highly skilled senior architects and professional developers in SOA projects, as well as inevitable delays in skill acquisition, makes this a challenging task. This paper examines the impact of alternative staffing strategies under various environmental conditions and provides guidance for staffing decisions. Using a design science methodology, it employs system dynamics as a vehicle for allowing human resource managers to examine the impact of alternative staffing strategies under a variety of environmental conditions.

Object-orientation and distributed systems are quickly becoming norms for new system development, generating renewed interest in distribution schemes traditionally directed at relational databases. Though a number of facilitating technologies, such as EJB, COM, or CORBA, are available, pragmatic, and rigorous approaches for effective distribution are still lacking. In this paper, we develop an approach for deriving object distribution models by exploiting design information. The approach exploits information realistically available during the design stage, without requiring guesstimates of operational parameters. It spans multiple layers, mappings across which may be adjusted depending upon changes in assumptions and operational conditions to create specific models. We demonstrate the approach by operationalizing it to create a model for object distribution in closely coupled client/server configurations. The detailed model we demonstrate, therefore, represents one specific instantiation of our approach. The model is accompanied by a decision support procedure that assists the designer in the search for a satisficing solution in the resulting combinatorial multiple criteria problem. We briefly describe a research prototype that served as proof-of-concept and demonstrate usefulness based on an analysis of results obtained for distribution of a real-world object-oriented application.

It is suggested that as rule-based system (RBS) technology gains wider acceptance, the need to create and maintain large knowledge bases will assume greater importance. Demonstrating a rule base to be free from error remains one of the obstacles to the adoption of this technology. An approach to RBS verification in which the system is modeled as a Petri net on which error detection is performed is presented. A set of propositions is formulated to locate errors of redundancy, conflict, circularity, and gaps in domain knowledge. Rigorous proofs of these propositions are provided. Difficulties in implementing a Petri net-based verifier and the potential restrictions of the applicability of this approach are discussed.>