Emergent content-oriented networks prompt Internet service providers (ISPs) to evolve and take major responsibility for content delivery. Numerous content items and varying content popularities motivate interdependence between peering ISPs to elaborate their content caching and sharing strategies. In this paper, we propose the concept of peering for content exchange between interdependent ISPs ...

Government services have been privatised in Australia and many other countries, yet the transition from government ‘hierarchy’ to service delivery by non-government providers has proven to be challenging. Organizations have to deliver the same services, but they struggle to find ways to improve their performance while still conforming to government regulations. In this paper we draw upon a case...

This paper discusses the problem of planning resource outsourcing and local configurations for infrastructure services that are subject to Service Level Agreements (SLA). The objective of our approach is to minimize implementation and outsourcing costs for reasons of competitiveness, while respecting business policies for profit and risk. We implement a greedy algorithm for outsourcing, using c...

While effective competition can force service providers to seek economically efficient methods to reduce costs, the deregulated electricity supply industry still allows some generators to exercise market power at particular locations, thereby preventing the deregulated power market to be perfectly competitive. In this paper, we investigate the interdependence of pricing mechanisms and strategy ...

With the rapid growth of congestion-sensitive and data-intensive applications, traditional settlement-free peering agreements with best-effort delivery often do not meet the QoS requirements of content providers (CPs). Meanwhile, Internet access providers (IAPs) feel that revenues from end-users are not sufficient to recoup the upgrade costs of network infrastructures. Consequently, some IAPs h...

I a name-your-own-price (NYOP) auction, consumers bid for a product or service. If a bid exceeds the concealed threshold price, the consumer receives the product at her bid price. This paper examines how to optimize the interactions between the NYOP retailer and service providers, while, at the same time, managing the bid acceptance rates in order to induce the desired consumer bidding behavior...

With the rapid development of information and communication technology, data empowerment has become an important way for platform service supply chain (PSSC) members to obtain a competitive advantage. Based on three-level PSSC network structure composed providers, operators, demand markets, this paper assumes that operators empower providers improve quality, invest in security risk control. The...

At this moment there is little coordination of the publication and use of open data. In this research coordination needs and challenges for open data and coordination mechanisms that can help in improving coordination are identified. A literature review shows that the opening and use of data are isolated and unrelated processes. Open data publishers do not profit from the wisdom of the crowd by...

Setting: Private and public tuberculosis (TB) treatment centers in Lagos State, Nigeria. Objective: To compare adherence of private and public providers of directly observed treatment short course (DOTS) in the Lagos State TB control program, Nigeria (LSTBLCP) with the national TB guidelines. Design: A retrospective review of treatment cards of TB patients managed within the first and second qu...