High availability is a critical feature for service clusters and cloud computing, and is often considered more valuable than performance. One commonly used technique to enhance the availability is live migration, which replicates services based on virtualization technology. However, continuous live migration with checkpointing will introduce significant overhead. In this paper, we present a lig...

In this research, we apply a discrete event simulation approach to explore how enterprises in the Chinese mainland make a successful operation with the aid of e-commerce. This paper examines the effects of proposed four kinds of transshipment operation network structures on the performance under different policies of transshipment and inventory allocation. Results show that: 1) transshipment ba...

Article history: Received 17 April 2015 Received in revised form 20 November 2015 Accepted 21 November 2015 Available online 22 November 2015 The current study examines the relationship between aspects of social service availability and child maltreatment. Specifically, the study uses negative binomial regression to estimate whether service availability, accessibility, and receipt are associate...

Service network design problems arise at airlines (passenger and cargo), trucking companies, railroads, etc., wherever there is a need to determine cost minimizing routes and schedules, given constraints on resource availability and level of service. We focus on a particular service network design application, namely, the express shipment delivery problem, and we develop models and a solution t...

Internet via satellite is already available as a service, but it has not grown to a competitive level. The advantage of a wireless link is the ubiquity, while the drawbacks are high cost and scarce availability of dedicated services. We discuss the problems found in setting up a complex environment for many users involved in telemedicine and the framework for a bank service using Telecom Italia...

This paper investigates the relative importance of service factors such as technology and facilities, how service providers are rated on those factors, and their relationship to customer satisfaction in a B2B environment. The results show that in the ocean freight shipping industry, customers placed more importance on factors such as efficiency in complaint handling, prompt availability of deli...

This paper introduces the project "EOMD Mining: EO Services Market Development for the Mining Sector", an Earth Observation Market Development (EOMD) activity within the framework of the ESA EOEP Market Development Element. High-level objectives of the project include the definition and implementation of a marketable integrated service for the mining market which includes satellite SAR based la...

In the service business, event correlation systems are used to predict and avoid system failures. Strategically, this may contribute to higher system availability and better service activity planning. Companies that want to benefit from this competitive advantage often meet two fundamental problems: the complexity of service monitoring increases with the number of correlation patterns. At the s...

As computing systems become increasingly mission-critical, a high level of service availability is essential. In order to maintain service availability, it is desirable to have the ability to migrate services from one server to another while having this change remain transparent to the client machines. Although commercial solutions exist which provide automatic failover capability, they are oft...

OBJECTIVE Frequent fast-food consumption is a well-known risk factor for obesity. This study sought to determine whether the availability of fast-food restaurants has an influence on body mass index (BMI). METHODS BMI and individual-level confounding variables were obtained from the 2007-08 Canadian Community Health Survey. Neighbourhood socio-demographic variables were acquired from the 2006...