Biblio
We consider the scenario where a cloud service provider (CSP) operates multiple geo-distributed datacenters to provide Internet-scale service. Our objective is to minimize the total electricity and bandwidth cost by jointly optimizing electricity procurement from wholesale markets and geographical load balancing (GLB), i.e., dynamically routing workloads to locations with cheaper electricity. Under the ideal setting where exact values of market prices and workloads are given, this problem reduces to a simple linear programming and is easy to solve. However, under the realistic setting where only distributions of these variables are available, the problem unfolds into a non-convex infinite-dimensional one and is challenging to solve. One of our main contributions is to develop an algorithm that is proven to solve the challenging problem optimally, by exploring the full design space of strategic bidding. Trace-driven evaluations corroborate our theoretical results, demonstrate fast convergence of our algorithm, and show that it can reduce the cost for the CSP by up to 20% as compared with baseline alternatives. This paper highlights the intriguing role of uncertainty in workloads and market prices, measured by their variances. While uncertainty in workloads deteriorates the cost-saving performance of joint electricity procurement and GLB, counter-intuitively, uncertainty in market prices can be exploited to achieve a cost reduction even larger than the setting without price uncertainty.
Firms collaborate with partners in research and development (R&D) of new technologies for many reasons such as to access complementary knowledge, know-how or skills, to seek new opportunities outside their traditional technology domain, to sustain their continuous flows of innovation, to reduce time to market, or to share risks and costs [1]. The adoption of collaborative research agreements (CRAs) or collaboration agreements (CAs) is rising rapidly as firms attempt to access innovation from various types of organizations to enhance their traditional in-house innovation [2], [3]. To achieve the objectives of their collaborations, firms need to share knowledge and jointly develop new knowledge. As more firms adopt open collaborative innovation strategies, intellectual property (IP) management has inevitably become important because clear and fair contractual IP terms and conditions such as IP ownership allocation, licensing arrangements and compensation for IP access are required for each collaborative project [4], [5]. Moreover, the firms need to adjust their IP management strategies to fit the unique characteristics and circumstances of each particular project [5].
This paper describes a novel aerospace electronic component risk assessment methodology and supporting virtual laboratory structure designed to augment existing supply chain management practices and aid in Microelectronics Trust Assurance. This toolkit and methodology applies structure to the unclear and evolving risk assessment problem, allowing quantification of key risks affecting both advanced and obsolete systems that rely on semiconductor technologies. The impacts of logistics & supply chain risk, technology & counterfeit risk, and faulty component risk on trusted and non-trusted procurement options are quantified. The benefits of component testing on part reliability are assessed and incorporated into counterfeit mitigation calculations. This toolkit and methodology seek to assist acquisition staff by providing actionable decision data regarding the increasing threat of counterfeit components by assessing the risks faced by systems, identifying mitigation strategies to reduce this risk, and resolving these risks through the optimal test and procurement path based on the component criticality risk tolerance of the program.