Digital Identities and Verifiable Credentials

in Business and Information Systems Engineering (2021), 63(5), 603-613

Public institutions and companies typically employ physical credentials (such as passports, social security cards, and employee badges) to identify individuals. Individuals can choose where to store their ... [more ▼]

Public institutions and companies typically employ physical credentials (such as passports, social security cards, and employee badges) to identify individuals. Individuals can choose where to store their physical credentials, and sometimes, they can decide to whom their credentials are disclosed. These familiar privileges inspired a new type of digital credential called a verifiable credential (VC). Similar to physical credentials, individuals can store their verifiable credentials in a so-called digital wallet on their mobile phone, on another edge device, or in the cloud, and they can use verifiable credentials for identification, authentication, and authorization. [less ▲]

Not All Doom and Gloom: How Energy-Intensive and Temporally Flexible Data Center Applications May Actually Promote Renewable Energy Sources

in Business and Information Systems Engineering (2021)

To achieve a sustainable energy system, a further increase in electricity generation from renewable energy sources (RES) is imperative. However, the development and implementation of RES entail various ... [more ▼]

To achieve a sustainable energy system, a further increase in electricity generation from renewable energy sources (RES) is imperative. However, the development and implementation of RES entail various challenges, e.g., dealing with grid stability issues due to RES’ intermittency. Correspondingly, increasingly volatile and even negative electricity prices question the economic viability of RES-plants. To address these challenges, this paper analyzes how the integration of an RES-plant and a computationally intensive, energy-consuming data center (DC) can promote investments in RES-plants. An optimization model is developed that calculates the net present value (NPV) of an integrated energy system (IES) comprising an RES-plant and a DC, where the DC may directly consume electricity from the RES-plant. To gain applicable knowledge, this paper evaluates the developed model by means of two use-cases with real-world data, namely AWS computing instances for training Machine Learning algorithms and Bitcoin mining as relevant DC applications. The results illustrate that for both cases the NPV of the IES compared to a stand-alone RES-plant increases, which may lead to a promotion of RES-plants. The evaluation also finds that the IES may be able to provide significant energy flexibility that can be used to stabilize the electricity grid. Finally, the IES may also help to reduce the carbon-footprint of new energy-intensive DC applications by directly consuming electricity from RES-plants. [less ▲]

Scheduling Flexible Demand in Cloud Computing Spot Markets

in Business and Information Systems Engineering (2020), 62(1), 25--39

The rapid standardization and specialization of cloud computing services have led to the development of cloud spot markets on which cloud service providers and customers can trade in near real-time ... [more ▼]

The rapid standardization and specialization of cloud computing services have led to the development of cloud spot markets on which cloud service providers and customers can trade in near real-time. Frequent changes in demand and supply give rise to spot prices that vary throughout the day. Cloud customers often have temporal flexibility to execute their jobs before a specific deadline. In this paper, the authors apply real options analysis (ROA), which is an established valuation method designed to capture the flexibility of action under uncertainty. They adapt and compare multiple discrete-time approaches that enable cloud customers to quantify and exploit the monetary value of their short-term temporal flexibility. The paper contributes to the field by guaranteeing cloud job execution of variable-time requests in a single cloud spot market, whereas existing multi-market strategies may not fulfill requests when outbid. In a broad simulation of scenarios for the use of Amazon EC2 spot instances, the developed approaches exploit the existing savings potential up to 40 percent – a considerable extent. Moreover, the results demonstrate that ROA, which explicitly considers time-of-day-specific spot price patterns, outperforms traditional option pricing models and expectation optimization. [less ▲]

Do Not Forget About Smart Towns : How to Bring Customized Digital Innovation to Rural Areas

in Business and Information Systems Engineering (2018), 60(3), 243--257

To date, research on smart cities has primarily focused on urban congested areas. As this paper points out, it is becoming ever more important to look at intermediate and thinly populated regions like ... [more ▼]

To date, research on smart cities has primarily focused on urban congested areas. As this paper points out, it is becoming ever more important to look at intermediate and thinly populated regions like towns and rural areas as arenas for digital innovation. By following a multi-phase research process, we examine towns’ highly individual needs in an exploratory way, derive key aspects from recent literature that can serve to mitigate or solve their problems, and present an open innovation process by way of integrating local context factors, local stakeholders, and suitable information and communication technology solutions. Our objective is to develop a first digital innovation approach in a field that has so far been scarcely considered. We conduct a case study which demonstrates the applicability and effectiveness of our innovation approach in a small town in southern Germany and derive first important lessons learned. Thereby, the concept of an innovation ecosystem reveals a promising solution to face the challenges of the investigated town. [less ▲]