Given the critical consequences that IT can have on the survival of SMEs in a competitive environment, ITSM practices have becoming a necessity for SMEs that must be investigated. ITIL is criticized... Show More

Given the critical consequences that IT can have on the survival of SMEs in a competitive environment, ITSM practices have becoming a necessity for SMEs that must be investigated. ITIL is criticized as being appropriate for large enterprises and less for SMEs. Thus, it calls for tailoring this framework while taking into consideration the specific realities of small companies. In this context, this article provides a practical tool formally developed according to the design science research approach, and it addresses an area of relevance to both practitioners and academics and suggests solutions that can help managers to personalize IT service practices to suit the characteristics of small scale enterprises. Results show that the flexible nature of the proposed framework has enabled to overcome the main difficulties of ITIL components implementation in small scale environments. It is found that the integrated use of balanced scorecard perspectives and ITIL practices can help SMEs to better implement ITIL components, achieving in that way a better alignment between the business and the IT.

Data centers backup using a cloud service is a significant operation that saves the data from being lost. It reduces the costs and optimize the hardware provisioning level. Software defined... Show More

Data centers backup using a cloud service is a significant operation that saves the data from being lost. It reduces the costs and optimize the hardware provisioning level. Software defined networking (SDN) is a growing network paradigm which divides the usual monolithic control and data plane found in the classical network paradigm. It improves and simplifies the network management process. This research addresses a specific problem in SDNs regarding Quality of Service (QoS) target achievement in backup operations between data centers (inter-site). This fundamental backup activity has special QoS requirements. The aim of this article is to provide a new cost-efficient inter-site backup model for cloud networks using the SDN technique. It helps in choosing a path to perform the backup in the current network according to customer's and provider's requirements, while taking the QoS parameters into consideration simultaneously, in order to achieve an efficient-cost solution.

Cloud users expect high Quality of service (QoS) levels within their budget and the cloud service providers (CSPs) to maximize their profits, always strive for the cost and energy minimization and... Show More

Cloud users expect high Quality of service (QoS) levels within their budget and the cloud service providers (CSPs) to maximize their profits, always strive for the cost and energy minimization and better resource utilization. Any error in the management of resources causes Service Level Agreement (SLA) violations, high penalties, low customer satisfaction, and long-term losses. The objective of this article is to present a literature review on various resource provisioning strategies and also to present a novel cluster-based resource provisioning (CB-RP) technique that satisfies the needs of both cloud users and CSP. CB-RP employs a heart algorithm to cluster the arriving requests based on its characteristics. The CB-RP technique aims to analyze the requests and provision the resources according to the request category. Simulation results show that our technique produces significant improvements in terms of cost savings, resource utilization and turnaround time compared with state of art technique.

In this article, the authors discuss how business continuity methodologies can be used by data centers to respond to natural disasters, man-made disasters, and accidents. Because organizations... Show More

In this article, the authors discuss how business continuity methodologies can be used by data centers to respond to natural disasters, man-made disasters, and accidents. Because organizations depend on computing services, which may become unavailable when disasters strike, prudent risk management processes can provide for continuation and recovery of operations. With a focus on data centers, this article discusses the business continuity plan development process. This article also considers elements of a business continuity management plan, which includes strategy development, preparedness, mitigation, exercises, and response and recovery, and discuss business continuity strategies for colocation and cloud-based data center architectures. Finally, the authors discuss how the ordered weighted average (OWA) methodology can be used to incorporate a decision makers risk profile when confronted with decisions related to the processes discussed.

The purpose of this article is to explore the challenges faced when implementing the information technology infrastructure library (ITIL) framework. An online survey was completed by 169 Latin... Show More

The purpose of this article is to explore the challenges faced when implementing the information technology infrastructure library (ITIL) framework. An online survey was completed by 169 Latin American companies. Questions focused mainly on the current perceptions and assessment of ITIL benefits. A descriptive statistical analysis approach was employed. Evidence suggests that the main challenges of implementing ITIL are the time devoted by the information technology staff involved in the project, their understanding of ITIL purposes, and the support they receive from senior management. Participants suggested that the existence of a service management office (SMO) could represent a way of addressing these challenges and to more effectively realize ITIL benefits.