Describing how to avoid common vendor traps, Buying, Supporting, Maintaining Software and Equipment: An IT Manager's Guide to Controlling the Product Lifecycle will help readers better control the negotiation of their IT products and services and, ultimately, better manage the lifecycle of those purchases. The book supplies an inside look at the methods and goals of vendors and their contracts-which are almost always in conflict with end-user goals. The text is set up to follow the way most people experience technology products and contracting decisions. It begins by explaining the significance of the decisions made at the time of product selection. It details what you need to focus on when negotiating service and support agreements and describes how to use purchase orders to negotiate more favorable agreements. Covers product acquisition, support, and maintenance Examines hardware and software warranty and support models Considers finance and accounting issues for maintenance and support Spells out technology product details Explains postwarranty support and maintenance Provides the understanding to better negotiate with vendor sales teams Illustrating the types of problems typically experienced during product use, the book describes how to better control the useful life of your equipment. It supplies tips on how to avoid excessive charges from predatory vendors and concludes by delving into issues of product end of life. Explaining how to manage support and maintenance issues for the long term, this book provides the understanding you need to make sure you are more knowledgeable about the products and services your organization needs than the vendor teams with whom you are negotiating.

This book provides solid, state-of-the-art contributions from both scientists and practitioners working on botnet detection and analysis, including botnet economics. It presents original theoretical and empirical chapters dealing with both offensive and defensive aspects in this field. Chapters address fundamental theory, current trends and techniques for evading detection, as well as practical experiences concerning detection and defensive strategies for the botnet ecosystem, and include surveys, simulations, practical results, and case studies.

The increasing adoption of Business Process Management (BPM) has inspired pioneering software architects and developers to effectively leverage BPM-based software and process-centric architecture (PCA) to create software systems that enable essential business processes. Reflecting this emerging trend and evolving field, Process-Centric Architecture for Enterprise Software Systems provides a complete and accessible introduction explaining this architecture. The text presents, in detail, the analysis and design principles used in process-centric architecture. Illustrative examples demonstrate how to architect and design enterprise systems based on the business processes central to your organization. It covers the architectural aspects of business process management, the evolution of IT systems in enterprises, the importance of a business process focus, the role of workflows, business rules, enterprise application integration, and business process modeling languages such as WS-BPEL and BPML. It also investigates: Fundamental concepts of process-centric architecture style The PCA approach to architecting enterprise IT systems Business process driven applications and integration Two case studies that illustrate how to architect and design enterprise applications based on PCA SOA in the context of process-centric architecture Standards, technologies, and infrastructure behind PCA Explaining how to architect enterprise systems using a BPMS technology platform, J2EE components, and Web services, this forward-looking book will empower you to create systems centered on business processes and make today's enterprise processes successful and agile.

* Targests readers with a background in programming, interested in an introduction/refresher in statistical hypothesis testing * Uses Python throughout * Provides the reader with the opportunity of using the book whenever needed rather than following a sequential path.

Designed for introductory parallel computing courses at the advanced undergraduate or beginning graduate level, Elements of Parallel Computing presents the fundamental concepts of parallel computing not from the point of view of hardware, but from a more abstract view of algorithmic and implementation patterns. The aim is to facilitate the teaching of parallel programming by surveying some key algorithmic structures and programming models, together with an abstract representation of the underlying hardware. The presentation is friendly and informal. The content of the book is language neutral, using pseudocode that represents common programming language models. The first five chapters' present core concepts in parallel computing. SIMD, shared memory, and distributed memory machine models are covered, along with a brief discussion of what their execution models look like. The book also discusses decomposition as a fundamental activity in parallel algorithmic design, starting with a naive example, and continuing with a discussion of some key algorithmic structures. Important programming models are presented in depth, as well as important concepts of performance analysis, including work-depth analysis of task graphs, communication analysis of distributed memory algorithms, key performance metrics, and a discussion of barriers to obtaining good performance. The second part of the book presents three case studies that reinforce the concepts of the earlier chapters. One feature of these chapters is to contrast different solutions to the same problem, using select problems that aren't discussed frequently in parallel computing textbooks. They include the Single Source Shortest Path Problem, the Eikonal equation, and a classical computational geometry problem: computation of the two-dimensional convex hull. After presenting the problem and sequential algorithms, each chapter first discusses the sources of parallelism then

Analyzing how hacks are done, so as to stop them in the future Reverse engineering is the process of analyzing hardware or software and understanding it, without having access to the source code or design documents. Hackers are able to reverse engineer systems and exploit what they find with scary results. Now the good guys can use the same tools to thwart these threats. Practical Reverse Engineering goes under the hood of reverse engineering for security analysts, security engineers, and system programmers, so they can learn how to use these same processes to stop hackers in their tracks. The book covers x86, x64, and ARM (the first book to cover all three); Windows kernel-mode code rootkits and drivers; virtual machine protection techniques; and much more. Best of all, it offers a systematic approach to the material, with plenty of hands-on exercises and real-world examples. * Offers a systematic approach to understanding reverse engineering, with hands-on exercises and real-world examples * Covers x86, x64, and advanced RISC machine (ARM) architectures as well as deobfuscation and virtual machine protection techniques * Provides special coverage of Windows kernel-mode code (rootkits/drivers), a topic not often covered elsewhere, and explains how to analyze drivers step by step * Demystifies topics that have a steep learning curve * Includes a bonus chapter on reverse engineering tools Practical Reverse Engineering: Using x86, x64, ARM, Windows Kernel, and Reversing Tools provides crucial, up-to-date guidance for a broad range of IT professionals.

Unique selling point: * This book proposes several approaches for dynamic Android malware detection based on system calls which do not have the limitations of existing mechanisms. * This book will be useful for researchers, students, developers and security analysts to know how malware behavior represented in the form of system call graphs can effectively detect Android malware. * The malware detection mechanisms in this book can be integrated with commercial antivirus softwares to detect Android malware including obfuscated variants.

Coupled with machine learning, the use of signal processing techniques for big data analysis, Internet of things, smart cities, security, and bio-informatics applications has witnessed explosive growth. This has been made possible via fast algorithms on data, speech, image, and video processing with advanced GPU technology. This book presents an up-to-date tutorial and overview on learning technologies such as random forests, sparsity, and low-rank matrix estimation and cutting-edge visual/signal processing techniques, including face recognition, Kalman filtering, and multirate DSP. It discusses the applications that make use of deep learning, convolutional neural networks, random forests, etc. The applications include super-resolution imaging, fringe projection profilometry, human activities detection/capture, gesture recognition, spoken language processing, cooperative networks, bioinformatics, DNA, and healthcare.

In distributed, open systems like cyberspace, where the behavior of autonomous agents is uncertain and can affect other agents' welfare, trust management is used to allow agents to determine what to expect about the behavior of other agents. The role of trust management is to maximize trust between the parties and thereby provide a basis for cooperation to develop. Bringing together expertise from technology-oriented sciences, law, philosophy, and social sciences, Managing Trust in Cyberspace addresses fundamental issues underpinning computational trust models and covers trust management processes for dynamic open systems and applications in a tutorial style that aids in understanding. Topics include trust in autonomic and self-organized networks, cloud computing, embedded computing, multi-agent systems, digital rights management, security and quality issues in trusting e-government service delivery, and context-aware e-commerce applications. The book also presents a walk-through of online identity management and examines using trust and argumentation in recommender systems. It concludes with a comprehensive survey of anti-forensics for network security and a review of password security and protection. Researchers and practitioners in fields such as distributed computing, Internet technologies, networked systems, information systems, human computer interaction, human behavior modeling, and intelligent informatics especially benefit from a discussion of future trust management research directions including pervasive and ubiquitous computing, wireless ad-hoc and sensor networks, cloud computing, social networks, e-services, P2P networks, near-field communications (NFC), electronic knowledge management, and nano-communication networks.

While there are sporadic journal articles on socio-technical networks, there's long been a need for an integrated resource that addresses concrete socio-technical network (STN) design issues from algorithmic and engineering perspectives. Filling this need, Socio-Technical Networks: Science and Engineering Design provides a complete introduction to the fundamentals of one of the hottest research areas across the social sciences, networking, and computer science-including its definition, historical background, and models. Covering basic STN architecture from a physical/technological perspective, the book considers the system design process in a typical STN, including inputs, processes/actions, and outputs/products. It covers current applications, including transportation networks, energy systems, tele-healthcare, financial networks, and the World Wide Web. A group of STN expert contributors addresses privacy and security topics in the interdependent context of critical infrastructure, which include risk models, trust models, and privacy preserving schemes. Covers the physical and technological designs in a typical STN Considers STN applications in popular fields, such as healthcare and the virtual community Details a method for mapping and measuring complexity, uncertainty, and interactions among STN components The book examines the most important STN models, including graph theory, inferring agent dynamics, decision theory, and information mining. It also explains structural studies, behavioral studies, and agent/actor system studies and policy studies in different STN contexts. Complete with in-depth case studies, this book supplies the practical insight needed to address contemporary STN design issues.

Based upon the authors' experience in designing and deploying an embedded Linux system with a variety of applications, Embedded Linux System Design and Development contains a full embedded Linux system development roadmap for systems architects and software programmers. Explaining the issues that arise out of the use of Linux in embedded systems, the book facilitates movement to embedded Linux from traditional real-time operating systems, and describes the system design model containing embedded Linux. This book delivers practical solutions for writing, debugging, and profiling applications and drivers in embedded Linux, and for understanding Linux BSP architecture. It enables you to understand: various drivers such as serial, I2C and USB gadgets; uClinux architecture and its programming model; and the embedded Linux graphics subsystem. The text also promotes learning of methods to reduce system boot time, optimize memory and storage, and find memory leaks and corruption in applications. This volume benefits IT managers in planning to choose an embedded Linux distribution and in creating a roadmap for OS transition. It also describes the application of the Linux licensing model in commercial products.

The author developed Lightweight Enterprise Architecture (LEA) to enable a quick alignment of technology to business strategy. LEA's simple and effective framework makes it useful to a wide audience of users throughout an enterprise, coordinating resources for business requirements and facilitating optimal adoption of technology. Lightweight Enterprise Architectures provides a methodology and philosophy that organizations can easily adopt, resulting in immediate value-add without the pitfalls of traditional architectural styles. This systematic approach uses the right balance of tools and techniques to help an enterprise successfully develop its architecture. The first section of the text focuses on how enterprises deploy architecture and how architecture is an evolving discipline. The second section introduces LEA, detailing a structure that supports architecture and benefits all stakeholders. The book concludes by explaining the approach needed to put the framework into practice, analyzing deployment issues and how the architecture is involved throughout the lifecycle of technology projects and systems. This innovative resource tool provides you with a simpler, easily executable architecture, the ability to embrace a complex environment, and a framework to measure and control technology at the enterprise level.

This book gives a solution to the problem of constructing lightwave paths in free spaces by proposing the concept of a Self-Organized Lightwave Network (SOLNET). This concept enables us to form self-aligned coupling optical waveguides automatically. SOLNETs are fabricated by self-focusing of lightwaves in photosensitive media, in which the refractive index increases upon light beam exposure, to realize the following functions: 1) Optical solder: Self-aligned optical couplings between misaligned devices with different core sizes 2) Three-dimensional optical wiring 3) Targeting lightwaves onto specific objects SOLNETs are expected to reduce the efforts to implement lightwaves into electronic systems and allow us to create new architectures, thus reducing costs and energy dissipation and improving overall system performance. SOLNETs are also expected to be applied to a wide range of fields where lightwaves are utilized, for example, solar energy conversion systems and biomedical technologies, especially photo-assisted cancer therapies. Readers will systematically learn concepts and features of SOLNETs, SOLNET performance predicted by computer simulations, experimental demonstrations for the proof of concepts, and expected applications. They will also be prepared for future challenges of the applications. This book is intended to be read by scientists, engineers, and graduate students who study advanced optoelectronic systems such as optical interconnects within computers and optical networking systems, and those who produce new ideas or strategies on lightwave-related subjects.

This easy to read textbook provides an introduction to computer architecture, while focusing on the essential aspects of hardware that programmers need to know. The topics are explained from a programmer's point of view, and the text emphasizes consequences for programmers. Divided in five parts, the book covers the basics of digital logic, gates, and data paths, as well as the three primary aspects of architecture: processors, memories, and I/O systems. The book also covers advanced topics of parallelism, pipelining, power and energy, and performance. A hands-on lab is also included. The second edition contains three new chapters as well as changes and updates throughout.

As a manager of the 90s, you know that IT departments like your own must continue to meet increasingly sophisticated end-user needs despite highly limited resources. Learn when it s best to farm out work to consultants, when to reserve internal resources for other tasks, and how best to use your in-house staff. Coverage unlike any other in the marketplace. Written by 41 experts all practitioners in the networking and IS management fields this guidebook provides unique depth and scope. In this Third Edition, you ll find all new material that clearly outlines today s hottest issues. Prepares you to quickly respond to management requirements. Are you aware of the latest on strategic planning, systems planning, and points-of-failure planning? Have you linked your IT architecture and business plans? Have you updated senior management as to how IT can help achieve corporate goals? Do you have a corporate technology plan? Turn to the Handbook for all this and more. Now you can get up to speed on the latest in client/server, on how to give your end users faster and greater access to corporate data at a lower cost, and on how to quantify the amount of network support that this improvement will require? The Handbook was written with you in mind. The perfect resource for today s successful communications systems manager. This comprehensive, highly authoritative reference is designed to help you select, maintain, and manage your communications systems. It provides all the tools you need to evaluate, formulate, and implement effective communications network strategies to keep pace with today s rapidly changing technology. You get illustrations, tables, and diagrams to clearly outline and guide you the entire way. Be aware of the latest technologies and their impact on you. Keep costs down by aiding your thinking through all the systems and network elements from concept through implementation and day-to-day operation.

BTEC National for IT Practitioners: Systems Units has been written specifically to cover the systems pathway of the BTEC National specifications. This book caters for one of the most popular pathways in the BTEC National specifications, bringing together all the key specialist units for students who have chosen the systems route, including the core units specific to this pathway that aren't covered in the core unit book. When used alongside its companions for the core units and business pathways, this series delivers the most accessible and usable student textbooks available for the BTEC National. Units covered: Unit 11 - Data Analysis and Design Unit 22 - Network Management Unit 13 - Human Computer Interaction Unit 28 - IT Technical Support Unit 16 - Maintaining Computer Systems Unit 29 - IT Systems Troubleshooting and Repair Written by an experienced tutor, each unit is illustrated with assessment activities, end-of-chapter questions, case studies and practical exercises. The result is a clear, straightforward textbook that encourages independent study and acts as a reference to various topics within the qualification.

Servers are the heart of the network. The Handbook of Server Management and Administration keeps you up-to-date with the very latest server technology and gives you the tools you need to choose, configure and maintain a server that will serve users, data streams and corporate goals with equal efficiency. The practical tips and case studies you'll find in the Handbook include detailed explanations of: the case for mainframe servers in the enterprise server installation considerations server security policies server data bus standards migrating to NetWare 4.1 and Novell Directory Services Windows NT Workstation vs. Server 4.0 UNIX as an application server fax servers Internet e-mail servers the art of placing images and multimedia on the corporate network and more! The contributing authors to the Handbook of Server Management and Administration are industry experts. Some work at corporations that have designed innovative solutions. Some wear battle scars from the field. Many are experienced writers and public speakers. All of them know what they're talking about. These leading authorities give you a wealth of practical advice, tips and strategies on how to: evaluate anti-virus solutions within distributed environments set up fault tolerance protection and RAID technology for networks choose the best network data and storage management techniques

Parallel Supercomputing in MIMD Architectures is devoted to supercomputing on a wide variety of Multiple-Instruction-Multiple-Data (MIMD)-class parallel machines. This book describes architectural concepts, commercial and research hardware implementations, major programming concepts, algorithmic methods, representative applications, and benefits and drawbacks. Commercial machines described include Connection Machine 5, NCUBE, Butterfly, Meiko, Intel iPSC, iPSC/2 and iWarp, DSP3, Multimax, Sequent, and Teradata. Research machines covered include the J-Machine, PAX, Concert, and ASP. Operating systems, languages, translating sequential programs to parallel, and semiautomatic parallelizing are aspects of MIMD software addressed in Parallel Supercomputing in MIMD Architectures. MIMD issues such as scalability, partitioning, processor utilization, and heterogenous networks are discussed as well.This book is packed with important information and richly illustrated with diagrams and tables, Parallel Supercomputing in MIMD Architectures is an essential reference for computer professionals, program managers, applications system designers, scientists, engineers, and students in the computer sciences.

As the dividing line between traditional computing science and telecommunications quickly becomes blurred or disappears in today's rapidly changing environment, there is an increasing need for computer professionals to possess knowledge of telecommunications principles. Telecommunications and Networking presents a comprehensive overview of the interaction and relationship between telecommunications and data processing. The book's early chapters cover basic telecommunications vocabulary, common nomenclature, telecommunications fundamentals, as well as the important relationships among coding, error detection and correction, and noise. Later chapters discuss such topics as switching, timing, topological structures, routing algorithms, and teleprocessing. Other topics covered in detail include specific concerns inherent to computer communications, such as protocols, error detection and correction, network monitoring and security, and system validation. System designers and programmers can no longer be effective simply by understanding the tradeoffs between hardware and software. Telecommunications and Networking provides both computing professionals and students the fundamental computer communications concepts necessary to function in today's computer industry.

This essential handbook for the data communications/network manager and planner covers a variety of data communication and IS topics. The Network Manager's Handbook addresses technical issues associated with local and wide area networking, purchasing communications services, supporting the network's users, understanding the telecommunications regulatory environment, personnel issues, and more.

A fast-growing area in the communications industry is the internetworking of an ever-increasing proliferation of computers, particularly via local area networks (LANs). The LAN is a resource-sharing data communications network being used by many offices to interchange information such as electronic mail, word processing, and files among computers and other devices. This unique book shows the user how to establish the performance characteristics of a LAN before putting it to use in a particular type of situation. Simulation of Local Area Networks consists of eight chapters, each with its own extensive list of references. The first chapter provides a brief review of local area networks, and the second chapter gives the analytical models of popular LANs-token-passing bus and ring networks, CSMA/CD LANs, and star networks. Chapter 3 covers general principles of simulation, and Chapter 4 discusses fundamental concepts in probability and statistics relating to simulation modeling. Materials in Chapters 3 and 4 are specifically applied in developing simulation models on token-passing LANs, CSMA/CD LANs, and star LANs in Chapters 5 through 7. The computer code in Chapters 5, 6, and 7 is divided into segments, and a detailed explanation of each segment is provided. The last chapter reviews special-purpose languages such as GPSS, SIMSCRIPT, GASP, SIMULA, SLAM, and RESQ. Helpful criteria for language selection are included. The entire code is put together in the appendixes. This book has two major advantages over existing texts. First, it uses C, a well-developed general-purpose language that is familiar to most analysts. Second, the text specifically applies the simulation principles to local area networks. No other book available shows the systems analyst how to evaluate the performance of existing or proposed systems under different kinds of conditions.

Piezoelectric Materials and Devices: Applications in Engineering and Medical Sciences provides a complete overview of piezoelectric materials, covering all aspects of the materials starting from fundamental concepts. The treatment includes physics of piezoelectric materials, their characteristics and applications. The author uses simple language to explain the theory of piezoelectricity and introduce readers to the properties and design of different types of piezoelectric materials, such as those used in engineering and medical device applications. This book: Introduces various types of dielectrics and their classification based on their characteristics Addresses the mathematical formulation of piezoelectric effects and the definition of various piezoelectric constants Describes the structure and properties of practical piezoelectric materials such as quartz, lead zirconate titanate, barium titanate, zinc oxide, and polyvinylidene fluoride Covers the entire gamut of piezoelectric devices used in engineering and medical applications Discusses briefly the use of piezoelectric materials for energy harvesting and structural health monitoring Explores new developments in biomedical applications of piezoelectric devices such as drug delivery, blood flow and blood pressure monitoring, robotic operating tools, etc. Elaborates on design and virtual prototyping of piezoelectric devices through the use of FE software tools ANSYS and PAFEC Giving design engineers, scientists, and technologists the information and guidance they will need to adopt piezoelectric materials in the development of smart devices, this book will also motivate engineering and science students to initiate new research for developing innovative devices. Its contents will be invaluable to both students and professionals seeking a greater understanding of fundamentals and applications in the evolving field of piezoelectrics.

The book presents the current standards of digital multiplexing, called synchronous digital hierarchy, including analog multiplexing technologies. It is aimed at telecommunication professionals who want to develop an understanding of digital multiplexing and synchronous digital hierarchy, in particular, and the functioning of practical telecommunication systems, in general. The text includes all relevant fundamentals and provides a handy reference for problem solving or defining operations and maintenance strategies. The author covers digital conversion and TDM principles, line coding and digital modulation, signal impairments, and synchronization, as well as emerging systems.

Windows Networking Tools: The Complete Guide to Management, Troubleshooting, and Security explains how to use built-in Windows networking tools and third-party networking products to diagnose network problems, address performance issues, and enhance the overall security of your system and network. It starts with a review of the major components of the TCP/IP protocol suite, as well as IP and MAC addressing, to provide a clear understanding of the various networking tools and how they are used in a LAN and a TCP/IP networking environment. Although the book focuses on built-in Windows networking tools, it also investigates a number of third-party products that can enhance the performance of your computer. It identifies tools to help you to understand the traffic flow and operational status of your network , illustrates the use of numerous tools, and shows you several methods to protect your computers from malicious software. It also examines one of the best programs for examining the flow of data on a network Wireshark and explains how to use this program to scan for open ports and discover vulnerability issues. In addition to helping you gain insight into existing problems, the text highlights built-in Windows networking tools that can help to determine if you can expect future bandwidth bottlenecks or other problems to occur under different growth scenarios. Placing the proven methods of an industry veteran at your fingertips, the book includes a chapter devoted to software programs that can enhance the security of your network. It explains how to negate the operation of unwanted advertisement trackers as well as how to minimize and alleviate the various types of hacking from keyboard loggers to network viruses. In the event your computational device is lost or stolen a cryptographic program is described that results in data becoming meaningless to the person or persons attempting to read your

Created to help scientists and engineers write computer code, this practical book addresses the important tools and techniques that are necessary for scientific computing, but which are not yet commonplace in science and engineering curricula. This book contains chapters summarizing the most important topics that computational researchers need to know about. It leverages the viewpoints of passionate experts involved with scientific computing courses around the globe and aims to be a starting point for new computational scientists and a reference for the experienced. Each contributed chapter focuses on a specific tool or skill, providing the content needed to provide a working knowledge of the topic in about one day. While many individual books on specific computing topics exist, none is explicitly focused on getting technical professionals and students up and running immediately across a variety of computational areas.