In this paper, we deal with the sequential decision making problem of agents operating in computational economies, where there is uncertainty regarding the trustworthiness of service providers populating the environment. Specifically, we propose a generic Bayesian trust model, and formulate the optimal Bayesian solution to the exploration-exploitation problem facing the agents when repeatedly i...

Return on Investment (ROI) analysis plays a primary role in business strategic planning; however it is not such a straightforward process in itself. From the perspective of a Language Service Provider’s (LSP) case study, an economic impact analysis of machine translation (MT) technology usage is required. Potential initial development and customization costs are investigated, as well as estimat...

The exact calculation of logistics costs has become a real challenge in logistics and supply chain management. It is essential to gain reliable and accurate costing information to attain efficient resource allocation within the logistics service provider companies. Traditional costing approaches, however, may not be sufficient to reach this aim in case of complex and heterogeneous logistics ser...

We consider a scenario where a population of customers is spatially distributed in a region which is served by two wireless service providers that offer Internet Access via two noninterfering technologies: one having a uniform coverage over the region (e.g. WAN), and the other, a limited coverage (e.g. WiFi “hotspots”). We assume that customers are equipped with “dual mode” wireless communicati...

Based on a comprehensive consideration of features of the selection of green logistics service providers, the paper, proposes the criteria for evaluating providers of green logistics service by combining the traditional evaluation index system, and the criteria are determined as compatibility with the users, cost of service, quality of service, service ability and adaptation with environment. I...

As the popularity of the Web grows, an increasing number of businesses are wishing to seize the potential market opportunities that it o ers. The shared Web hosting service uses the possibility to create a set of virtual servers on the same physical server. Each virtual server is set-up to write its own access log. Such implementation and set-up splits the \whole picture" of web server usage in...

Although the Internet has evolved over more than twenty years, resources useful to health information professionals have become available on the Internet only recently. A survey conducted by the Regional Medical Libraries of the National Network of Libraries of Medicine in the fall of 1993 indicates that libraries at academic institutions are much more likely to have access to the Internet (72%...

The culture of online sharing of information on the Internet extends to unauthorised sharing of copyright content, and is perceived as a major threat to copyright owners and content industries. Enforcement of existing copyright laws is difficult due to the widespread nature of unauthorised sharing. Rights holders have pursued individuals and organisations involved through existing legal channel...

This study investigates the existence of different types of logistics service providers (LSPs) and the relationship of type with service performance. A cluster analysis of the survey data from 221 LSPs resulted in the identification of four types of LSP. The taxonomy was developed that reveals that LSPs are at various stages of development in terms of service capability, and highlights the serv...

Virtualization has been lately introduced for supporting and simplifying service providers management with promising results. Nevertheless, using virtualization introduces also new challenges that must be considered. One of them relates with the data management in the provider. In this paper, we propose an innovative approach for performing efficiently all the data-related processes in a virtua...