DOCSLIB.ORG

Centralized Versus Decentralized Computing: Organizational Considerations and Management Options

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Centralized Versus Decentralized Computing: Organizational Considerations and Management Options Centralized versus Decentralized Computing: Organizational Considerations and Management Options JOHN LESLIE KING Department of Information and Computer Science, University of Cahfornia, Irvine, Irvine, California 92717 The long.standing debate over whether to centralize or decentralize computing is examined in terms of the fundamental organizational and economic factors at stake. The traditional debate is evaluated, and found to focus predominantly on issues of efficiency versus effectiveness, with solutions based on a rationalistic strategy of optimizing in this trade-off. A behavioral assessment suggests that the driving issues in the debate are the politics of organization and resources, centering on the issue of control. The economics of computing depolyment decisions are presented as an important issue, but one that often serves as a field of argument in which political concerns are dealt with. The debate in this light appears to be unresolvable in the long run, although effective strategies can be developed when the larger issues are recognized. The current situation facing managers of computing, given the advent of small and comparatively inexpensive computers, is examined in detail, and a set of management options for dealing with this persistent issue is presented. Categories and Subject Descriptors: K.6.0 [Management of Computing and Information Systems]: General; K.6.1 [Management of Computing and Information Systems]: Project and People Management; K.6.4 [Management of Computing and Information Systems]: System Management General Terms: Economics, Management Additional Key Words and Phrases: Centralization/decentralization, management of computing/information systems, structural arrangements for computing INTRODUCTION usually prompted by technological changes that affect the efficiencies of existing ar- Managers of computing have confronted rangements [EDPIDR 1979; Bernard 1979; decisions about centralizing or decentral- Breslin and Tashenberg 1978; Bucci and izing computing ever since the computer Streeter 1979; Buchanan and Linowes proved to be more than just another piece 1980a, 19801o; Chervany et al. 1978; Demb of office equipment. The debate has flour- 1975; D'Oliveria 1977; Ein-Dor and Segev ished for nearly twenty years in the infor- 1978; McKenney and McFarlan 1982; mation systems community. The goal has Metres 1981; Nolan 1979; Reynolds 1977; been to determine an appropriate arrange- Rockhart et al. 1979; Withington 1980]. ment for the deployment of computing re- The terrain in which to make centrali- sources in organizations, given user needs zation decisions has been continually and the desire of management to control changing. Predictions about the "comput- both costs and uses. A universally appro- ing arrangement of the future" range from priate arrangement has never been found. the conservative to the revolutionary: from Nevertheless, there has been a steady flow the deployment of small, special-purpose of advice on how to deal with this question, computers in user departments, to net- Permission to copy without fee all or part of this material is granted provided that the copies are not made or distributed for direct commercial advantage, the ACM copyright notice and the title of the publication and its date appear, and notice is given that copying is by permission of the Association for Computing Machinery. To copy otherwise, or to republish, requires a fee and/or specific permission. © 1984 ACM 0360-0300/83/1200-0319 $00.75 ComputingSurveys, Vol. 15, No. 4, December1983 320 • John Leslie King CONTENTS in perspective. It provides a working defi- nition of these concepts and outlines the basic pros and cons of each. The traditional arguments are then discussed, focusing on INTRODUCTION the customary assessment of trade-offs be- 1. THE DEBATE IN PERSPECTIVE tween efficiency and effectiveness. A de- 1 1 A Working Defimtion tailed examination of the problems with 1.2 Pros and Cons of the Alternatwes this traditional perspective concentrates on 2, THE TRADITIONAL DEBATE 3. ORGANIZATIONAL CONSIDERATIONS the critical importance of political and or- IN THE DEBATE TODAY ganizational factors, and notes the ways in 3.1 Politics of Orgamzation which simple economic analyses of the al- and Resources ternatives can result in misleading conclu- 3 2 The Economic Dynamics of Deployment Decisions sions. The examination reveals that control 3.3 The Interaction of Pohtical is the major factor in centralization/decen- and Economic Considerations tralization decisions, and that other aspects 4 MANAGEMENT OPTIONS IN of the debate must be seen in light of this CENTRALIZATION VERSUS DECENTRALIZATION fact. The paper concludes with discussion 4.1 A No-Option Option of the options available to management in 4.2 The Centralization Continuum dealing with the centralization issue, given 4.3 Mixed Strategies the political and economic factors that un- 4.4 Choosing an Option derlie the debate.2 5. CONCLUSION ACKNOWLEDGMENTS REFERENCES 1. THE DEBATE IN PERSPECTIVE 1.1 A Working Definition A v Most conceptualizations of centralization worked distributed systems deployed and decentralization rely on some concept throughout the organization, and even to of distance: the distance between plant lo- remote intelligent terminals in employees' cations, the distance between organiza- homes enabling the work force to "telecom- tional levels or operations, or the distance mute" instead of coming in to the office. 1 (physical or organizational) between where This rapid pace of change helps sustain the decisions are made and where they are en- centralization debate. But as we shall see, acted.3 the debate is rooted in more basic questions of organizational structure and behavior. 2 This paper deals specifically with computer applica- Changing technology merely rearranges the tion to administrative data processing. It does not address the special cases such as process control ap- forum in which these issues are debated. At plications or computer-aided design and manufactur- a time of rapid technological change, with ing that typically do not require intraorganizational concomitant pressure to decide how "best" data sharing. However, many of the issues discussed to organize the use of computing technol- here apply also to such applications. ogy, a review of these basic issues will help 3 This paper addresses centralization as a policy issue (i.e., what centralization/decentralization policies make sense of a confusing subject. should be followed under certain circumstances). It This paper puts the issue of centraliza- does not deal with centralization as an artifact of other tion versus decentralization of computing forces. See Robey [1981] for a discussion oftbe impact of computing on organizational structure (i.e. comput- 1 The predictions made about the potential impact of ing use as it results in greater or lesser organizational computing on organizations can be drawn from a wide centralization). The definition of centralization pro- variety of sources, including the popular press. Among vided in this paper draws upon an established tradition the better grounded predictions and assessments of research in organizations. The reader is encouraged are those by Buchanan and Linowes [1980a, 1980b], to review work by Blau [1970], Burns and Stalker Dolotta et al. [1976], EDP Analyzer [1980a, 1980b, [1961], Child [1973], Cyert and March [1963], Downs 1980c], Infotech International [1977a, 1977b], Jenkins [1967], Lawrence and Lorsch [1969], Meyer [1972], and Santos [1982], King [1982b], Kraemer [1982], Moore [1962, 1967], Perrow [1979, 1982], Pfeffer Kraemer and King [1982], McKenney and McFarlan [1982], Simon et al. [1954], Wagner [1966], Weber [1982], Mertes [1981], Olson [1983], Rockart et al. [1947, 1952] and Zannetos [1965]. These provide both [1979], Salerno [1981], and Statland [1979]. overviews and detailed definitions of the concept of Computing Surveys, Vol. 15, No.' 4, December 1983 Centralized versus Decentralized Computing • 321 There are three separate aspects to the performance. It also encourages lower level centralization issue. Centralization versus managers to exploit innovative opportuni- decentralization of control concerns the lo- ties that improve unit-level performance. cus of decision-making activity in the or- Decentralization of control can create prob- ganization. Centralization implies the con- lems if lower level managers are incompe- centration of decision-making power in a tent, are not appropriately held to account single person or small group; decentraliza- for their decisions, or make decisions that tion implies that decisions are made at result in problems for other organizational various levels in the organizational hier- units or for higher management. archy. Centralization versus decentraliza- Centralization of physical location capi- tion of physical location concerns the siting talizes on economies of scale and preserves of facilities. Centralized physical location organizational integrity in operations. The has all facilitiesin one place; decentralized economies of scale arise from exploiting the location spreads facilitiesaround the region full potential of technologies that cause or the country, or even internationally. output to increase more rapidly than costs. Centralization versus decentralization of The costs of duplicating overhead and fa- function refers to the position of an activity cilities can be avoided, and organizational or responsibility within the structure of the protocols are easier
Load more

Recommended publications
  • P2P Business Applications: Future and Directions
    Communications and Network, 2012, 4, 248-260 http://dx.doi.org/10.4236/cn.2012.43029 Published Online August 2012 (http://www.SciRP.org/journal/cn) P2P Business Applications: Future and Directions Pankaj Pankaj, Micki Hyde, James A. Rodger MIS and Decision Sciences, Eberly College of Business & Information Technology, Indiana University of Pennsylvania, Indiana, USA Email: [email protected] Received May 20, 2012; revised June 18, 2012; accepted July 17, 2012 ABSTRACT Since the launch of Napster in June 1999, peer-to-peer technology (P2P) has become synonymous with file sharing ap- plications that are the bane of the recording industry due to copyright infringements and consequent revenue losses. P2P promised a revolution in business computing which has not arrived. It has become synonymous with illegal file sharing and copyright violations. Meanwhile the information systems industry has undergone a paradigm change, and we are supposedly living in a world of cloud computing and mobile devices. It is pertinent to examine if P2P, as a revolution- ary technology, is still relevant and important today and will be in future. One has to examine this question in the con- text of the fact that P2P technologies have matured but have however had limited adoption outside file-sharing in the consumer space. This paper provides a detailed analysis of P2P computing and offers some propositions to answer the question of the relevancy of P2P. It is proposed that P2P is still a relevant technology but may be reshaped in the com- ing years in a different form as compared to what exists today.
    [Show full text]
  • From Technology to Society: an Overview of Blockchain-Based DAO
    > REPLACE THIS LINE WITH YOUR PAPER IDENTIFICATION NUMBER < 1 From Technology to Society: An Overview of Blockchain-based DAO Lu Liu, Sicong Zhou, Huawei Huang1, Zibin Zheng1 Decentralized Autonomous Organization (DAO) is believed to play a significant role in our future society governed in a decentralized way. In this article, we first explain the definitions and preliminaries of DAO. Then, we conduct a literature review of the existing studies of DAO published in the recent few years. Through the literature review, we find out that a comprehensive survey towards the state-of-the-art studies of DAO is still missing. To fill this gap, we perform such an overview by identifying and classifying the most valuable proposals and perspectives closely related to the combination of DAO and blockchain technologies. We anticipate that this survey can help researchers, engineers, and educators acknowledge the cutting-edge development of blockchain-related DAO technologies. Index Terms—Blockchain, Contracts, DAO, Fault Tolerant System, Governance I. INTRODUCTION Blockchain-based technologies have been deeply adopted by User multiple applications that are closely related to every corner of User Contract our daily life, such as cryptocurrencies, tokenomics, business User applications, Internet-of-Things (IoT) applications, and etc.. Decentralized Autonomous Organization (DAO), as one of the Exchange blockchain applications shown in Fig. 1, is growing rapidly Miner Developer and drawing great attention from both academia and the Contract governments around the world. Although DAO has brought Developer a lot of opportunities to blockchain technologies, we are sur- prised to find out that an overview of DAO in the perspective Contract Exchange Miner of blockchains is still missing.
    [Show full text]
  • The Technology Copyright © ${Date}
    1 The Technology Copyright © ${Date}. ${Publisher}. All rights reserved. © ${Date}. ${Publisher}. Copyright Copyright © ${Date}. ${Publisher}. All rights reserved. © ${Date}. ${Publisher}. Copyright 1 Blockchains, Bitcoin, and Decentralized Computing Platforms At their core, blockchains are decentralized databases, maintained by a dis­ tributed network of computers. They blend together a variety of dif er ent technologies— including peer-­to-­peer networks, public-­private key cryptography, and consensus mechanisms—to create a novel type of database. We provide he re a short description of how blockchains work, and unpack and contextualize their key technological components. ­UNTIL THE BIRTH of the Internet, computers suffered in isolation. They were islands, lacking a way to connect to one another except by using cumber- some cables. That all changed in the late 1950s. With the Soviets successfully launching Sputnik into space, and with fears of the Cold War mounting, re- searchers at the Rand Corporation began to explore a new computing para- digm—in hopes of developing a system that would be able to withstand a nuclear catastrophe.1 In August 1964, af ter years of research, Paul Baran, one of the Rand researchers, reported a breakthrough. By relying on a technology called packet switching, Baran was able to send fragments of information from one computer to another and have these fragments reassembled, almost like magic.2 Armed with Baran’s research, the Advanced Research Proj ects Agency Copyright © ${Date}. ${Publisher}. All rights reserved. © ${Date}. ${Publisher}. Copyright (ARPA) at the U.S. Department of Defense used this new technology to 13 14 BLOCKCHAIN AND THE LAW create the first network of computers, ARPAnet, later renamed DARPAnet after “Defense” was added to the beginning of the agency’s name, helping researchers and academics to share files and exchange resources with one an- other.
    [Show full text]
  • Research Problems of Decentralized Systems with Largely Autonomous Nodes
    RESEARCH PROBLEMS OF DECENTRALIZED SYSTEMS WITH LARGELY AUTONOMOUS NODES by Jerome H. Saltzer Massachusetts Institute of Technology A currently popular systems research project is to explore the possibilities and problems for computer system organization that arise from the rapidly falling cost of computing hardware. Interconnecting fleets of mini- or micro-computers and putting intelligence in terminals and concentrators to produce so-called "distributed systems" has recently been a booming development activity. While these efforts range from ingenious to misguided, many seem to miss a most important aspect of the revolution in hardware costs: that more than any other factor, the en_~ cost of acquiring and operating a free-standing, complete computer system has dropped and continues to drop rapidly. Where a decade ago the capital outlay required to install a computer system ranged from $150,000 up into the millions, today the low end of that range is below $15,000 and dropping. The consequence of this particular observation for system structure comes from the next level of analysis. In most organizations, decisions to make capital acquisitions tend to be more centralized for larger capita] amounts, and less centralized for smaller capital amounts. On this basis we may conjecture that lower entry costs for computer systems will lead naturally to computer acquisition decisions being made at points lower in a management hierarchy. Further, because a lower-level organization usually has a smaller mission, those smaller-priced computers will tend to span a smaller range of applications, and in the limit of the argument will be dedicated to a single application.
    [Show full text]
  • Cloud Customer Architecture for Blockchain
    Cloud Customer Architecture for Blockchain Executive Overview Blockchain technology has the potential to radically alter the way enterprises conduct business as well as the way institutions process transactions. Businesses and governments often operate in isolation but with blockchain technology participants can engage in business transactions with customers, suppliers, regulators, potentially spanning across geographical boundaries. Blockchain technology, at its core, features an immutable distributed ledger, a decentralized network that is cryptographically secured. Blockchain architecture gives participants the ability to share a ledger, through peer to peer replication, which is updated every time a block of transaction(s) is agreed to be committed. The technology can reduce operational costs and friction, create transaction records that are immutable, and enable transparent ledgers where updates are nearly instantaneous. It may also dramatically change the way workflow and business procedures are designed inside an enterprise and open up new opportunities for innovation and growth. Blockchain technology can be viewed from a business, legal and technical perspective: • From a business perspective, blockchain is an exchange network that facilitates transfer of value, assets, or other entities between willing and mutually agreeing participants, ensuring privacy and control of data to stakeholders • From a legal perspective, blockchain ledger transactions are validated, indisputable transactions, which do not require intermediaries or trusted third-party legal entities. • From a technical perspective, blockchain is a replicated, distributed ledger of transactions with ledger entries referencing other data stores (for additional information related to ledger transactions). Cryptography is used to ensure that network participants see only the parts of the ledger that are relevant to them, and that transactions are secure, authenticated and verifiable, in the context of permissioned business blockchains.
    [Show full text]
  • A Decentralized Marketplace Application on the Ethereum Blockchain
    2018 IEEE 4th International Conference on Collaboration and Internet Computing A Decentralized Marketplace Application on The Ethereum Blockchain R. Vishnu Prasad Ram Dantu Aditya Paul Paula Mears Department of Computer Science Department of Computer Science Department of Computer Science Department of Computer Science University of North Texas University of North Texas University of North Texas University of North Texas Denton, USA Denton, USA Denton, USA Denton, USA [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] Kirill Morozov Department of Computer Science University of North Texas Denton, USA [email protected] Abstract—Modern centralized online marketplaces used as a platform to build truly decentralized such as eBay offer an alternative option for consumers to applications with no central point of failure and no both sell and purchase goods with relative ease. However, hierarchical ownership of user data. This has significant drawbacks to these marketplaces include the platform’s advantages for data security, privacy, and ownership, as ability to block merchants at their own whim, the fees paid well as the potential to dramatically reduce middle-man to the platform when listing a product and when selling a costs. The issue of user trust in decentralized product, and the lack of privacy of users’ data. In this applications that run on a blockchain platform is one that paper, we propose an application that remedies all three of has been studied [3] and developed on recently, and it is these drawbacks through use of the Ethereum blockchain now possible to build application that the user can trust platform.
    [Show full text]
  • Rethinking General-Purpose Decentralized Computing
    Rethinking General-Purpose Decentralized Computing Enis Ceyhun Alp∗ Eleftherios Kokoris-Kogias∗ [email protected] [email protected] EPFL EPFL Georgia Fragkouli Bryan Ford [email protected] [email protected] EPFL EPFL Abstract 1 Introduction While showing great promise, smart contracts are difficult Decentralized systems have been studied extensively over to program correctly, as they need a deep understanding of the past decades [14, 17, 40, 44, 50]. One of the most recent, cryptography and distributed algorithms, and offer limited and arguably the most popular, decentralized system is the functionality, as they have to be deterministic and cannot blockchain and its most promising application is smart con- operate on secret data. In this paper we present Protean, tracts. Smart contracts are user-defined programs that are a general-purpose decentralized computing platform that executed by a network of nodes that reach consensus on addresses these limitations by moving from a monolithic program state. Ethereum, the world’s second largest cryp- execution model, where all participating nodes store all the tocurrency, claims to be a general-purpose decentralized state and execute every computation, to a modular execution- computer that can support execution of arbitrary code in model. Protean employs secure specialized modules, called smart contracts. However, Ethereum and its successors [1, 2] functional units, for building decentralized applications that fall short of their claim due to several shortcomings. First, are currently insecure or impossible to implement with smart they do not support non-deterministic operations and cannot contracts. Each functional unit is a distributed system that securely operate on private data.
    [Show full text]
  • Decentralized P2P Broker for M2M and Iot Applications †
    proceedings Proceedings Decentralized P2P Broker for M2M and IoT Applications † Iván Froiz-Míguez 1,2 , Paula Fraga-Lamas 1,2,* and Tiago M. Fernández-Caramés 1,2,* 1 Department of Computer Engineering, Faculty of Computer Science, Universidade da Coruña, 15071 A Coruña, Spain; [email protected] 2 CITIC Research Center, Universidade da Coruña, 15071 A Coruña, Spain * Correspondence: [email protected] (P.F.-L.); [email protected] (T.M.F.-C.); Tel.: +34-981-167-000 (ext. 6051) (P.F.-L.) † Presented at the 3rd XoveTIC Conference, A Coruña, Spain, 8–9 October 2020 Published: 20 August 2020 Abstract: The recent increase in the number of connected IoT devices, as well as the heterogeneity of the environments where they are deployed, has derived into the growth of the complexity of Machine-to-Machine (M2M) communication protocols and technologies. In addition, the hardware used by IoT devices has become more powerful and efficient. Such enhancements have made it possible to implement novel decentralized computing architectures like the ones based on edge computing, which offload part of the central server processing by using multiple distributed low-power nodes. In order to ease the deployment and synchronization of decentralized edge computing nodes, this paper describes an M2M distributed protocol based on Peer-to-Peer (P2P) communications that can be executed on low-power ARM devices. In addition, this paper proposes to make use of brokerless communications by using a distributed publication/subscription protocol. Thanks to the fact that information is stored in a distributed way among the nodes of the swarm and since each node can implement a specific access control system, the proposed system is able to make use of write access mechanisms and encryption for the stored data so that the rest of the nodes cannot access sensitive information.
    [Show full text]
  • Rethinking General-Purpose Decentralized Computing
    Rethinking General-Purpose Decentralized Computing Enis Ceyhun Alp∗ Eleftherios Kokoris-Kogias∗ [email protected] [email protected] EPFL EPFL Georgia Fragkouli Bryan Ford [email protected] [email protected] EPFL EPFL Abstract 1 Introduction While showing great promise, smart contracts are difficult Decentralized systems have been studied extensively over to program correctly, as they need a deep understanding of the past decades [14, 17, 40, 44, 50]. One of the most recent, cryptography and distributed algorithms, and offer limited and arguably the most popular, decentralized system is the functionality, as they have to be deterministic and cannot blockchain and its most promising application is smart con- operate on secret data. In this paper we present Protean, tracts. Smart contracts are user-defined programs that are a general-purpose decentralized computing platform that executed by a network of nodes that reach consensus on addresses these limitations by moving from a monolithic program state. Ethereum, the world’s second largest cryp- execution model, where all participating nodes store all the tocurrency, claims to be a general-purpose decentralized state and execute every computation, to a modular execution- computer that can support execution of arbitrary code in model. Protean employs secure specialized modules, called smart contracts. However, Ethereum and its successors [1, 2] functional units, for building decentralized applications that fall short of their claim due to several shortcomings. First, are currently insecure or impossible to implement with smart they do not support non-deterministic operations and cannot contracts. Each functional unit is a distributed system that securely operate on private data.
    [Show full text]
  • A Conceptual Architecture in Decentralizing Computing, Storage, and Networking Aspect of Iot Infrastructure
    IoT Article A Conceptual Architecture in Decentralizing Computing, Storage, and Networking Aspect of IoT Infrastructure Yustus Eko Oktian , Elizabeth Nathania Witanto and Sang-Gon Lee * College of Software Convergence, Dongseo University, Busan 47011, Korea; [email protected] (Y.E.O.); [email protected] (E.N.W.) * Correspondence: [email protected] Abstract: Since the inception of the Internet of Things (IoT), we have adopted centralized architecture for decades. With the vastly growing number of IoT devices and gateways, this architecture struggles to cope with the high demands of state-of-the-art IoT services, which require scalable and responsive infrastructure. In response, decentralization becomes a considerable interest among IoT adopters. Following a similar trajectory, this paper introduces an IoT architecture re-work that enables three spheres of IoT workflows (i.e., computing, storage, and networking) to be run in a distributed manner. In particular, we employ the blockchain and smart contract to provide a secure computing platform. The distributed storage network maintains the saving of IoT raw data and application data. The software-defined networking (SDN) controllers and SDN switches exist in the architecture to provide connectivity across multiple IoT domains. We envision all of those services in the form of separate yet integrated peer-to-peer (P2P) overlay networks, which IoT actors such as IoT domain owners, IoT users, Internet Service Provider (ISP), and government can cultivate. We also present several IoT workflow examples showing how IoT developers can adapt to this new proposed architecture. Based on the presented workflows, the IoT computing can be performed in a trusted Citation: Oktian, Y.E.; Witanto, E.N.; and privacy-preserving manner, the IoT storage can be made robust and verifiable, and finally, we can Lee, S.-G.
    [Show full text]
  • Download Whitepaper
    WHITEPAPER WWW.IAGON.COM v4.5 1 TABLE OF CONTENTS OVERVIEW .............................................................................................................................3 INTRODUCTION .....................................................................................................................5 MARKET OUTLOOK OF CLOUD STORAGE SERVICES .............................................................6 MARKET OUTLOOK OF CLOUD COMPUTING SERVICES ..........................................................7 IAGON’S AI-BASED COMPUTATIONAL PROCESSES ...............................................................8 IAGON’S MULTIPLE BLOCKCHAIN SUPPORT .........................................................................9 IAGON’S SECURE LAKE TECHNOLOGY ..................................................................................9 IAGON’S SMART COMPUTING GRID PLATFORM AND AI-TRACKER TECHNOLOGY .................11 CASE STUDY ........................................................................................................................12 REGULATIONS .....................................................................................................................13 REINFORCEMENT LEARNING ...............................................................................................13 DATA MINING ........................................................................................................................14 BLOCKCHAIN .......................................................................................................................15
    [Show full text]
  • Cloud Computing : Centralization and Data Sovereignty Primavera De Filippi, Smari Mccarthy
    Cloud Computing : Centralization and Data Sovereignty Primavera de Filippi, Smari Mccarthy To cite this version: Primavera de Filippi, Smari Mccarthy. Cloud Computing : Centralization and Data Sovereignty. European Journal of Law and Technology, University of Warwick, 2012, 3 (2). hal-00746065 HAL Id: hal-00746065 https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-00746065 Submitted on 6 Nov 2012 HAL is a multi-disciplinary open access L’archive ouverte pluridisciplinaire HAL, est archive for the deposit and dissemination of sci- destinée au dépôt et à la diffusion de documents entific research documents, whether they are pub- scientifiques de niveau recherche, publiés ou non, lished or not. The documents may come from émanant des établissements d’enseignement et de teaching and research institutions in France or recherche français ou étrangers, des laboratoires abroad, or from public or private research centers. publics ou privés. Cloud Computing: Centralization and Data Sovereignty Primavera De Filippi, Smari McCarthy Abstract: Cloud computing can be defined as the provision of computing resources on-demand over the Internet. Although this might bring a number of advantages to end-users in terms of accessibility and elasticity of costs, problems arise concerning the collection of personal information in the Cloud and the legitimate exploitation thereof. To the extent that most of the content and software application are only accessible online, users have no longer control over the manner in which they can access their data and the extent to which third parties can exploit it. 1. Introduction “Cloud computing” has become a popular, yet poorly defined term in online service provision. By aggregating a large number of computing resources together into a few clusters of very large dimensions, Cloud computing has created an imbalance in authority structures that is very similar to the structural changes witnessed during the Industrial revolution.
    [Show full text]