Cloud computing has emerged as a new computational paradigm for facilitating services to its consumersover the internet. Cloud computing offers many attractive promises to the general public or big companies like Amazon, Google, Microsoft, IBM etc., to maintain and upgrade their position in fast growing cloud computing environment and to enhance their services for a large number of users. However, apart from the enticing offerings of cloud computing the development of this technology is still in its infancy and many issues need to be resolved with security being the strongest barrier to its adoption. Security concerns is an active area of research, which needs to be addressed properly to avoid security threats and attacks which are disasters for both service providers and service consumers. This paper highlights cloud computing key concepts, its architectural principles, essential characteristics for cloud computing, key security requirements, security threats in cloud computing, security attacks in cloud computing, and future research challenges.
In this paper we intend to present and discuss in some detail the pros and cons with Enterprise Systems, also known as Enterprise Resource Planning System (ERP). We will compare and contrast two market dominating Enterprise Symptoms, namely SAP and Oracle.We also intend to discuss Best of Breed (BoB) systems and their suitability over Enterprise Systems or vice versa. BoB systems usually offer the best possible solution for a particular business area, for example: accounting, personal finance, online installment loans, cash advances, etc. Whereas an Enterprise System typically offers a set of integrated software modules with a central database. The database is shared within the organization by different business areas within the organization. Finally, we will focus on the factors which are important to consider in choosing a package.
A Text-To-Speech (TTS) system is a computer application that is capable of converting typed text into speech. This paper contains description of working of a TTS system along with architecture of the system and various available TTS systems for Indian Languages with comparison of these systems on the basis of the methods used by them for speech synthesis. TTS system generally involves two steps, text processing and speech generation. Synthetic speech may be used in several applications, like, telecommunications services, language education, aid to handicapped persons, fundamental and applied research etc. TTS involves many challenges during the process of conversion of text to speech. The most important qualities expected from speech synthesis system are naturalness and intelligibility. The general architecture of a TTS system and different waveform generation methods are discussed in this paper. A scheme for developing a TTS system for Punjabi Language is also included in this paper.
With the rapid development of information technology, a new period so-called “Megadata” is coming. “Megadata” is a broad term for data sets so large or complex that faces many challenges including data analysis, capture and search, data storage, and information privacy, etc. However, the perpetual storage of megadata may cause the risks of being misused or misinterpreted. How to protect personal data thus become one of the primary objectives of data controllers and processors on the internet in many countries. Meanwhile, the European Union is taking active steps to protect personal data from misuse and abuse. The purpose of the paper thus hopes to unpack the concepts of “Megadata” from the current legal reform of the EU Data Protection Regulation.
In this paper, we investigate a simple but effective coding mechanism, namely Coding Opportunistically (COPE) [2], and the privacy violations which are likely to happen to COPE. The COPE data, from the source node through the network to its destination node, can be easily learned by the surrounding nodes, particularly, intersecting nodes and neighbour nodes. This leads to a serious consequence in leaking the node identity and its private data. In order to cope with the mentioned issues, we can apply cryptographic schemes. However, the security solutions often exploit the public key schemes which nowadays run more slowly and give the longer encrypted values as the effects of the key size increase to guarantee the algorithm complexity. Hence, while the coding mechanism aims to decrease the bandwidth consumption by aggregating (i.e., coding) multiple packets in the network, the security solutions increase the data quantity. However, a necessary needs of combining data coding mechanism and cryptographic algorithm is raised for both preserving privacy and optimizing bandwidth use at the same time as mentioned above. In this paper we thus propose SCOPE, a lightweight privacy preserving approach able to support nodes running the COPE protocol in a secret way, by adopting the Elliptic Curve Cryptography (ECC) homomorphic encryption algorithm. The proposal’s effectiveness and efficiency are proved through a variety of experiments.
This research investigates Instagram adoption for business (IB) by twenty-seven entrepreneurs in Kuwait.The selected case studies were already adopters of IB and reported different challenges facing their success.This maximization approach in selecting adopters of IB is espoused hoping to warrant sufficient and meaningful insights. Guided by the technological innovations theories, the research findings were identified and aggregated under the corresponding context. It was found that the success of IB was dependent on overcoming different technological, organizational and environmental (TOE) challenges. Implications arising from these factors pointed to different TOE challenges facing IB success in Kuwait. It is suggested that IB initiatives in Kuwait are still evolving and in need for support from both industry and government entities to push such initiatives forward. The research provides ample recommendations concerning theory and practice and portrays different future research areas.
Information and communication technology (ICT) plays a significant role in developing education, specifically K-12 education in the world. Promoting ICT in education in UAE as a developed country is one of the components of the national education policy. UAE has launched many initiatives, aimed at developing ICT in the education system. One of these initiatives is review and develop the old standards of the UAE that published in 2008. As a result, in 2015 the Ministry of Education (MOE) of the UAE published new standards to improve the earlier one based on international criteria. This paper outlines the updated standards created for teaching and execution criteria for K–12 Computer Science and technology education intended to reinforce Computer Science familiarity and competency all through Public primary and secondary Schools in United Arab Emirates (UAE). The paper shows and compares ICT standards of UK, Australia and international organization (ISTEL, CSTA, 21st-century skills) with the UAE standards.