A Combinatorial Reliability Analysis of Generic Service Function Chains in Data Center Networks

In data center networks, the reliability of Service Function Chain (SFC)—an end-to-end service presented by a chain of virtual network functions (VNFs)—is a complex and specific function of placement, configuration, and application requirements, both in hardware and software. Existing approaches to reliability analysis do not jointly consider multiple features of system components, including, (i) heterogeneity, (ii) disjointness, (iii) sharing, (iv) redundancy, and (v) failure interdependency. To this end, we develop a novel analysis of service reliability of the so-called generic SFC, consisting of n = k + r sub-SFCs, whereby k ≥ 1 and r ≥ 0 are the numbers of arbitrary placed primary and backup (redundant) sub-SFCs, respectively. Our analysis is based on combinatorics and a reduced binomial theorem—resulting in a simple approach, which, however, can be utilized to analyze rather complex SFC configurations. The analysis is practically applicable to various VNF placement strategies in arbitrary data center configurations, and topologies and can be effectively used for evaluation and optimization of reliable SFC placements.

Bottleneck-Aware Resource Allocation for Service Processes

In 5G systems and beyond, traditional generic service models are no longer appropriate for highly customized and intelligent services. The process of reinventing service models involves allocating available resources, where the performance of service processes is determined by the activity node with the lowest service rate. This paper proposes a new bottleneck-aware resource allocation approach by formulating the resource allocation as a max-min problem. The approach can allocate resources proportional to the workload of each activity, which can guarantee that the service rates of activities within a process are equal or close-to-equal. Based on the business process simulator (i.e., BIMP) simulation results show that the approach is able to reduce the average cycle time and improve resource utilization, as compared to existing alternatives. The results also show that the approach can effectively mitigate the impact of bottleneck activity on the performance of service processes.

Survey to evaluate care of complex clients in residential setting

AimsDelivering a new efficient assessment and shorter term secondary mental Health intervention service for individual sectorsBackgroundIn November 2015, there was a transition to services with the focus on delivering more efficient service to clientsPreviously we had been a combined sector Service. This transition, a reduction in resources and a move away from delivering care Through specialist mental health teams created from the national service framework - such as Assertive outreach, early intervention in psychosis and community rehabilitation - to a more Streamlined generic service, catering for these differing groups of people using a “Pathways Model” approachResultAcross the two sectors we had 47 clients on CPA Pathway living in 24 hour residential Settings who all had a current care coordinator.These 47 clients represented the workload currently of 2.8 FTE Band 6 care coordinators.There were at Origin, 13 Residential/Nursing/Secure 24 Hour care providers, where clients were residing.However of these 90% of residents lived in one of 5 settings, 3 settings in Ashfield and 2 in Mansfield.Over 50% of individuals residing did not have existing connections with Mansfield or Ashfield before being placed into the area.18 Clients (%38) were under section of the mental health act and 1client (%2) was on a life-Licence from criminal justice.ConclusionTransfer of CPA Care Coordination ProtocolTo send paper referral to our Single Point of Access Meeting at the listed address at the earliest point relocation/placement is confirmed.Formal handover meeting for care will be coordinated, not sooner than 3 months after the placement commences. It will be expected that services currently involved in provision of service continue to hold care responsibility in the interim period.As we move to a paperless environment, provision of electronic documentation such has previous CPA documents, Risk assessments, social circumstance reports & Discharge summaries, would be greatly appreciated

Political Ambition and Constituent Service: Does Ambition Influence How Local Officials Respond to Electoral and Non-Electoral Service Requests?

Theoretically, political ambitions paired with elections generate more responsive elected officials. In this paper, we test whether the progressive political ambitions of public officials affect whether and how they respond to their constituents by conducting a experimental audit study where local public officials receive both an electorally related service request and a generic service request. We combine their responses (or non-responses) with data from a survey of these public officials conducted months prior about their political ambition in seeking higher office. On the whole, we find that politically ambitious officials are not more responsive to electorally oriented service requests and that there are not systematic differences in the content of the responses of ambitious and non-ambitious elected officials. In areas of constituency service, ambition does not seem to affect representational behavior, regardless of whether the service requests are electorally related or not.

SDWS

This paper introduces SDWS (Semantic Description of Web Services), a Web tool which generates semantic descriptions from collections of Web services. The fundamental approach of SDWS consists of the integration of a set of ontological models for the representation of different Web service description languages and models. The main contributions of this proposal are (i) a general ontological model for the representation of Web services, (ii) a set of language-specific ontological models for the representation of different Web service descriptions implementations, and (iii) a set of software modules that automatically parse Web service descriptions and produce their respective ontological representation. The design of the generic service model incorporates the common elements that all service descriptions share: a service name, a set of operations, and input and output parameters; together with other important elements that semantic models define: preconditions and effects. Experimental results show that the automatic generation of semantic descriptions from public Web services is feasible and represents an important step towards the integration of a general semantic service registry.