Intelligent IT Outsourcing enables practitioners to focus in on the essential issues that need to be addressed so that the fundamental structure of their sourcing strategy and its implementation is sound. The authors provide insight into the challenges likely to be faced and give detailed advice on how to pre-empt and manage these.

IT and outsourcing continue to be problematic, not least because fundamental learning about this subject fails to be applied systematically, and because IT is inherently difficult to manage. The economics are not obvious and emerging technologies have to be addressed, therefore IT goes to the heart of many enterprises and interfaces with multiple business units and processes, and there are continuous skills shortages.
Unfortunately complexities are not removed in outsourced situations where additional problems come into play, for example the supplier's capabilities, whether the IT is right for an outsourcing solution, and whether the contract is robust but flexible enough to allow for outsourcing to take place. Objectives need to be realistic, and factors such as whether the internal management is mature and capable enough in this field, and the impact of prohibitive switching costs on behaviour once an outsourcing deal has been signed all have to be taken into account.
The authors have built up over two decades of research, advisory and practitioner experience that enables them to distil the fundamental challenges in IT and outsourcing and demonstrate how these can be addressed.
* Focuses on the fundamentals of what should be done and what should be avoided, based on actual experience applied in major IT outsourcing deals
* Researchfindings and case examples included throughout to support recommended practices
* Written by highly experienced, internationally acknowledged experts in the field

Scheduling in Parallel Computing Systems: Fuzzy and Annealing Techniques advocates the viability of using fuzzy and annealing methods in solving scheduling problems for parallel computing systems. The book proposes new techniques for both static and dynamic scheduling, using emerging paradigms that are inspired by natural phenomena such as fuzzy logic, mean-field annealing, and simulated annealing. Systems that are designed using such techniques are often referred to in the literature as intelligent' because of their capability to adapt to sudden changes in their environments. Moreover, most of these changes cannot be anticipated in advance or included in the original design of the system. Scheduling in Parallel Computing Systems: Fuzzy and Annealing Techniques provides results that prove such approaches can become viable alternatives to orthodox solutions to the scheduling problem, which are mostly based on heuristics. Although heuristics are robust and reliable when solving certain instances of the scheduling problem, they do not perform well when one needs to obtain solutions to general forms of the scheduling problem. On the other hand, techniques inspired by natural phenomena have been successfully applied for solving a wide range of combinatorial optimization problems (e.g. traveling salesman, graph partitioning). The success of these methods motivated their use in this book to solve scheduling problems that are known to be formidable combinatorial problems. Scheduling in Parallel Computing Systems: Fuzzy and Annealing Techniques is an excellent reference and may be used for advanced courses on the topic.

This work provides system architects a methodology for the implementation of x.500 and LDAP based metadirectory provisioning systems. In addition this work assists in the business process analysis that accompanies any deployment. DOC Safe Harbor

The instant access that hackers have to the latest tools and techniques demands that companies become more aggressive in defending the security of their networks. Conducting a network vulnerability assessment, a self-induced hack attack, identifies the network components and faults in policies, and procedures that expose a company to the damage caused by malicious network intruders.

Managing a Network Vulnerability Assessment provides a formal framework for finding and eliminating network security threats, ensuring that no vulnerabilities are overlooked. This thorough overview focuses on the steps necessary to successfully manage an assessment, including the development of a scope statement, the understanding and proper use of assessment methodology, the creation of an expert assessment team, and the production of a valuable response report. The book also details what commercial, freeware, and shareware tools are available, how they work, and how to use them.

By following the procedures outlined in this guide, a company can pinpoint what individual parts of their network need to be hardened, and avoid expensive and unnecessary purchases.

Input/Output in Parallel and Distributed Computer Systems has attracted increasing attention over the last few years, as it has become apparent that input/output performance, rather than CPU performance, may be the key limiting factor in the performance of future systems. This I/O bottleneck is caused by the increasing speed mismatch between processing units and storage devices, the use of multiple processors operating simultaneously in parallel and distributed systems, and by the increasing I/O demands of new classes of applications, like multimedia. It is also important to note that, to varying degrees, the I/O bottleneck exists at multiple levels of the memory hierarchy. All indications are that the I/O bottleneck will be with us for some time to come, and is likely to increase in importance. Input/Output in Parallel and Distributed Computer Systems is based on papers presented at the 1994 and 1995 IOPADS workshops held in conjunction with the International Parallel Processing Symposium. This book is divided into three parts. Part I, the Introduction, contains four invited chapters which provide a tutorial survey of I/O issues in parallel and distributed systems. The chapters in Parts II and III contain selected research papers from the 1994 and 1995 IOPADS workshops; many of these papers have been substantially revised and updated for inclusion in this volume. Part II collects the papers from both years which deal with various aspects of system software, and Part III addresses architectural issues. Input/Output in Parallel and Distributed Computer Systems is suitable as a secondary text for graduate level courses in computer architecture, software engineering, and multimedia systems, and as a reference for researchers and practitioners in industry.

This updated and reorganized Fifth edition of Software Testing: A Craftsman's Approach continues to be a valuable reference for software testers, developers, and engineers, by applying the strong mathematics content of previous editions to a coherent treatment of software testing. Responding to instructor and student survey input, the authors have streamlined chapters and examples. The Fifth Edition: Has a new chapter on feature interaction testing that explores the feature interaction problem and explains how to reduce tests Uses Java instead of pseudo-code for all examples including structured and object-oriented ones Presents model-based development and provides an explanation of how to conduct testing within model-based development environments Explains testing in waterfall, iterative, and agile software development projects Explores test-driven development, reexamines all-pairs testing, and explains the four contexts of software testing Thoroughly revised and updated, Software Testing: A Craftsman's Approach, Fifth Edition is sure to become a standard reference for those who need to stay up to date with evolving technologies in software testing.

Virtual Interaction: Interaction in Virtual Inhabited 3D Worlds answers the basic research questions involved in the development of user-friendly interfaces, such as:
* How does one navigate in and with a virtual inhabited three-dimensional world?
* How can the virtual world and the interface be part of the same world?
* How can the use of these interfaces be supported by implicit narrative structures?
* How can the autonomous agents function as assistants to the end-user?
* How can the current--what you see is what you get--be replaced by What you want is what you get:?
Containing the edited research papers resulting from an ambitious, cross-disciplinary research project, this volume examines the core activity of interfaces: interaction. It takes the reader all the way from general theories and conceptualizations of interaction aspects of virtual inhabited 3D worlds, through theories of and methods for the design of autonomous agents, ending in specific design methodology considerations and suggestions for management in the multimedia industry.

In this book, the subject is developed from basics of components involved. Each concept is clearly depicted through illustrations. Programming has been carried out in C programming with Linux background. A set of quiz and review questions has been presented at the end of each chapter. The book covers various topics from the basic building blocks, design methodologies, modeling of embedded systems to layered approach in embedded systems, microcontrollers. The aim in writing this book is to make the readers aware of what an embedded system is all about, how it is constructed, challenges faced in this field and coding for it. The reader who is totally new to this subject can definitely opt for this book to get a feel for the subject.

Unique selling point: Exploration of the societal and ethical issues surrounding the use and development of digital technology Core audience: IT managers and executives; academic researchers; students of IT Place in the market: Professional title with appeal to academics and students

Language, Compilers and Run-time Systems for Scalable Computers contains 20 articles based on presentations given at the third workshop of the same title, and 13 extended abstracts from the poster session. Starting with new developments in classical problems of parallel compiler design, such as dependence analysis and an exploration of loop parallelism, the book goes on to address the issues of compiler strategy for specific architectures and programming environments. Several chapters investigate support for multi-threading, object orientation, irregular computation, locality enhancement, and communication optimization. Issues of the interface between language and operating system support are also discussed. Finally, the load balance issues are discussed in different contexts, including sparse matrix computation and iteratively balanced adaptive solvers for partial differential equations. Some additional topics are also discussed in the extended abstracts. Each chapter provides a bibliography of relevant papers and the book can thus be used as a reference to the most up-to-date research in parallel software engineering.

We are now in the 'third wave' of Knowledge Management - the first was focused on the potential of new technology, while the second focused on the nature of knowledge and how people 'know' and learn. The focus in the third phase is two-fold: building individual and team productivity, and proper alignment of Knowledge Management efforts in helping deliver on strategic goals of the organization.
Knowledge Management- a Blueprint for Delivery explores and builds on current ideas about the dynamics of knowledge in organizations, answering such questions as: 'What is knowledge management?' and 'What does it mean for today's companies and organizations?'
Written by two leading knowledge management practitioners, this book looks beyond academic theory and software company hype to focus on the roles that knowledge and information play in creating high-performance organizations.
Built on their extensive experience of Knowledge Management programme design and delivery, Knowledge Management- a Blueprint for Delivery:
- contains a comprehensive survey of the whole area of Knowledge Management, from theory and strategy creation through to techniques, tools, and delivery of change
- provides an insight into developing and managing Knowledge Management initiatives
- bridges the gap between theoretical, strategic, and practical hands-on perspectives
Contains a comprehensive survey of the whole area of Knowledge Management, from theory and strategy creation through to techniques, tools and delivery of change
Provides an insight into developing and managing Knowledge Management initiatives
Bridges the gap between theoretical, strategic and practical hands-on perspectives

Real Application Clusters (RAC) and the Grid architecture are Oracle's strategy for scaling out enterprise systems to cope with bigger workloads and more users. Many books limit themselves by conceptualizing and theorizing about RAC technology, but this book is the first to portray implementing and administering an Oracle 10"g" RAC system in a Linux environment. This book features basic concepts underlying Linux and Oracle RAC, design strategies, hardware procurement and configuration, and many other topics.

The RAC-specific technologies described include configuration of the interconnect, OCFS, ASM, Cluster Ready Services, and Grid Control. The Oracle features RMAN and Data Guard are also discussed, along with available hardware options. The authors include practical examples and configuration information, so that upon reading this book, youll be armed with the information you need to build an Oracle RAC database on Linux, whether it is on a single laptop or a 64-node Itanium cluster.

Written by an exponent of systems engineering, this is a comprehensive examination of systems thinking and methods, demonstrating how to use the ideas to create and manage more effective engineering systems. Using this resource, engineers should be able to apply systems thinking to the design, implementation and management of engineering systems.

A major, comprehensive professional text/reference for designing and maintaining security and reliability.
From basic concepts to designing principles to deployment, all critical concepts and phases are clearly explained and presented. Includes coverage of wireless security testing techniques and prevention techniques for intrusion (attacks). An essential resource for wireless network administrators and developers.

Hardware Software Co-Design of a Multimedia SOC Platform is one of the first of its kinds to provide a comprehensive overview of the design and implementation of the hardware and software of an SoC platform for multimedia applications. Topics covered in this book range from system level design methodology, multimedia algorithm implementation, a sub-word parallel, single-instruction-multiple data (SIMD) processor design, and its virtual platform implementation, to the development of an SIMD parallel compiler as well as a real-time operating system (RTOS). Hardware Software Co-Design of a Multimedia SOC Platform is written for practitioner engineers and technical managers who want to gain first hand knowledge about the hardware-software design process of an SoC platform. It offers both tutorial-like details to help readers become familiar with a diverse range of subjects, and in-depth analysis for advanced readers to pursue further.

In the last years, knowledge and learning management have made a significant impact on the IT research community. ""Open Source for Knowledge and Learning Management: Strategies Beyond Tools"" presents learning and knowledge management from a point of view where the basic tools and applications are provided by open source technologies. ""Open Source for Knowledge and Learning Management: Strategies Beyond Tools"" explains an intense orientation to the critical issues of the open source paradigm: open source tools, applications, social networks, and knowledge sharing in open source communities. Open source technologies, tools, and applications are analyzed in the context of knowledge and learning, and this convergence formulates a challenging landscape for the deployment of information technology.

This book presents various novel architectures for FPGA-optimized accurate and approximate operators, their detailed accuracy and performance analysis, various techniques to model the behavior of approximate operators, and thorough application-level analysis to evaluate the impact of approximations on the final output quality and performance metrics. As multiplication is one of the most commonly used and computationally expensive operations in various error-resilient applications such as digital signal and image processing and machine learning algorithms, this book particularly focuses on this operation. The book starts by elaborating on the various sources of error resilience and opportunities available for approximations on various layers of the computation stack. It then provides a detailed description of the state-of-the-art approximate computing-related works and highlights their limitations.

This book has been written for practitioners, researchers and stu dents in the fields of parallel and distributed computing. Its objective is to provide detailed coverage of the applications of graph theoretic tech niques to the problems of matching resources and requirements in multi ple computer systems. There has been considerable research in this area over the last decade and intense work continues even as this is being written. For the practitioner, this book serves as a rich source of solution techniques for problems that are routinely encountered in the real world. Algorithms are presented in sufficient detail to permit easy implementa tion; background material and fundamental concepts are covered in full. The researcher will find a clear exposition of graph theoretic tech niques applied to parallel and distributed computing. Research results are covered and many hitherto unpublished spanning the last decade results by the author are included. There are many unsolved problems in this field-it is hoped that this book will stimulate further research."

In the research area of computer science, practitioners are constantly searching for faster platforms with pertinent results. With analytics that span environmental development to computer hardware emulation, problem-solving algorithms are in high demand. Field-Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) is a promising computing platform that can be significantly faster for some applications and can be applied to a variety of fields. FPGA Algorithms and Applications in the IoT, AI, and High-Performance Computing provides emerging research exploring the theoretical and practical aspects of computable algorithms and applications within robotics and electronics development. Featuring coverage on a broad range of topics such as neuroscience, bioinformatics, and artificial intelligence, this book is ideally designed for computer science specialists, researchers, professors, and students seeking current research on cognitive analytics and advanced computing.

'The Project Manager's Toolkit' provides a quick reference checklist approach to drive an IT development project as well as solve issues that arise in the process. It can be used proactively to set a project on the right course and reactively for solutions to problems. It will: * help identify what needs doing next on an IT project * provide quick reference 'to-do' lists for use throughout the lifecycle of an IT project * answer the need for material that can be used to quality-check project deliverables It has been designed so that those on the project team who are facing a problem can pick up the book, turn to a relevant checklist and use it as a "starter-for-ten" to find a solution. For example, how to analyse data for a data-conversion exercise, or how to measure the quality of a project deliverable. 'The Project Manager's Toolkit' therefore provides a fast way to reduce an insolvable problem/issue to a set of smaller solvable ones

This book provides readers with a comprehensive, state-of-the-art reference to the design automation aspects of quantum computers. Given roadmaps calling for quantum computers with 2000 qubits in a few years, readers will benefit from the practical implementation aspects covered in this book. The authors discuss real hardware to the extent possible. Provides an up-to-date, single-source reference to design automation aspects of quantum computers; Presentation is not just theoretical, but substantiated with real quantum hardware; Covers multi-faceted aspects of quantum computers, providing readers with valuable information, no matter the direction in which technology moves.

A Handheld History is a unique celebration of portable platforms and their iconic games.

Forty years ago, businessmen fiddling with calculators inspired Gunpei Yokoi to create the Game & Watch. Ever since then, handheld gaming has been hugely influential, spawning communities who trade Pokémon in the playground and share Miis on the subway. This introspective adventure will delve into decades of gaming memories and reconnect you to that long car journey full of discarded AA batteries before speeding ahead to the contemporary days of blockbusters in your backpack.

Handheld gaming is celebrated loudly, proudly, and across hundreds of beautifully assembled pages of art and essays. Featuring words from many incredible voices, this is an unmissable ode to the gaming device that you keep close to your heart – right in your jacket pocket.

A clear, comprehensive guide to VMware's latest virtualization solution Mastering VMware NSX for vSphere is the ultimate guide to VMware's network security virtualization platform. Written by a rock star in the VMware community, this book offers invaluable guidance and crucial reference for every facet of NSX, with clear explanations that go far beyond the public documentation. Coverage includes NSX architecture, controllers, and edges; preparation and deployment; logical switches; VLANS and VXLANS; logical routers; virtualization; edge network services; firewall security; and much more to help you take full advantage of the platform's many features. More and more organizations are recognizing both the need for stronger network security and the powerful solution that is NSX; usage has doubled in the past year alone, and that trend is projected to grow--and these organizations need qualified professionals who know how to work effectively with the NSX platform. This book covers everything you need to know to exploit the platform's full functionality so you can: Step up security at the application level Automate security and networking services Streamline infrastructure for better continuity Improve compliance by isolating systems that handle sensitive data VMware's NSX provides advanced security tools at a lower cost than traditional networking. As server virtualization has already become a de facto standard in many circles, network virtualization will follow quickly--and NSX positions VMware in the lead the way vSphere won the servers. NSX allows you to boost security at a granular level, streamline compliance, and build a more robust defense against the sort of problems that make headlines. Mastering VMware NSX for vSphere helps you get up to speed quickly and put this powerful platform to work for your organization.

"Fundamentals of Wearable Computers and Augmented Reality" presents a broad coverage of the technologies and interface design issues associated with wearable computers and augmented reality displays both rapidly developing fields in computer science, engineering, and human interface design. This book presents concepts related to the use and underlying technologies of augmented reality and wearable computer systems. There are many application areas for this technology, such as medicine, manufacturing, training, and recreation. Wearable computers will allow a much closer association of information with the user than is possible with traditional desktop computers.
This book addresses an important aspect of wearable computers and augmented reality, either from the conceptual or from an application framework. Given the wide coverage of topics on issues related to the display of computer-generated images in the environment, this book can be used as a text for computer science, computer engineering, and interface design courses.

This volume explores the diverse applications of advanced tools and technologies of the emerging field of big data and their evidential value in business. It examines the role of analytics tools and methods of using big data in strengthening businesses to meet today's information challenges and shows how businesses can adapt big data for effective businesses practices. This volume shows how big data and the use of data analytics is being effectively adopted more frequently, especially in companies that are looking for new methods to develop smarter capabilities and tackle challenges in dynamic processes. Many illustrative case studies are presented that highlight how companies in every sector are now focusing on harnessing data to create a new way of doing business.