Reaching influential early adopters effectively in Finland : Rock Science – new generation board game

Innovations diffuse at different speed among the members of a social system through various communication channels. The group of early adopters can be seen as the most influential reference group for majority of people to base their innovation adoption decisions on. Thus, the early adopters can often accelerate the diffusion of innovations. The purpose of this research is to discover means of diffusion for an innovative product in Finnish market through the influential early adopters in respect to the characteristics of the case product. The purpose of the research can be achieved through the following sub objectives:  Who are the potential early adopters for the case product and why?  How the potential early adopters of the case product should be communicated with?  What would be the expectations, preferences, and experiences of the early adopters of the case product? The case product examined in this research is a new board game called Rock Science which is considered to be incremental innovation bringing board gaming and hard rock music together in a new way. The research was conducted in two different parts using both qualitative and quantitative research methods. This mixed method research began with expert interviews of six music industry experts. The information gathered from the interviews enabled researcher to compose the questionnaire for the quantitative part of the study. Internet survey that was sent out resulted with a sample of 97 responses from the targeted population. The key findings of the study suggest that (1) the potential early adopters for the case product are more likely to be young adults from the capital city area with great interest in rock music, (2) the early adopters can be reached effectively through credible online sources of information, and (3) the respondents overall product feedback is highly positive, except in the case of quality-price ratio of the product. This research indicates that more effective diffusion of Rock Science board game in Finland can be reached through (1) strategic alliances with music industry and media partnerships, (2) pricing adjustments, (3) use of supporting game formats, and (4) innovative use of various social media channels.

A distributed, cloud-ready, digital content processing and transformation platform and a specific use case

Poster at Open Repositories 2014, Helsinki, Finland, June 9-13, 2014

Distributed Repositories of Medieval Calendars and Crowd-Sourcing of Transcription

Presentation at Open Repositories 2014, Helsinki, Finland, June 9-13, 2014

Save Consumers Time and Money: Thou Shall Not Forget Digital Native Big Data Consumers

Poster at Open Repositories 2014, Helsinki, Finland, June 9-13, 2014

A Distributed Microservices Framework Integrating Taverna

Presentation at Open Repositories 2014, Helsinki, Finland, June 9-13, 2014

Exit times for some processes with normally distributed noise

Denna avhandling handlar om metoder för att hitta begränsningar för det asymptotiska beteendet hos en förväntad uthoppstid från ett område omkring en xpunkt för processer som har normalfördelad störning. I huvudsak behandlas olika typer av autoregressiva processer. Fyra olika metoder används. En metod som använder principen för stora avvikelser samt en metod som jämför uthoppstiden med en återkomsttid ger övre begränsningar för den förväntade uthoppstiden. En martingalmetod och en metod för normalfördelade stokastiska variabler ger undre begränsningar. Metoderna har alla både förtjänster och nackdelar. Genom att kombinera de olika metoderna får man de bästa resultaten. Vi får fram gränsvärdet för det asymptotiska beteendet hos en uthoppstid för den multivariata autoregressiva processen, samt motsvarande gränsvärde för den univariata autoregressiva processen av ordning n.

Value of Information Logistics Integration in Digital Business Ecosystem

Digital business ecosystems (DBE) are becoming an increasingly popular concept for modelling and building distributed systems in heterogeneous, decentralized and open environments. Information- and communication technology (ICT) enabled business solutions have created an opportunity for automated business relations and transactions. The deployment of ICT in business-to-business (B2B) integration seeks to improve competitiveness by establishing real-time information and offering better information visibility to business ecosystem actors. The products, components and raw material flows in supply chains are traditionally studied in logistics research. In this study, we expand the research to cover the processes parallel to the service and information flows as information logistics integration. In this thesis, we show how better integration and automation of information flows enhance the speed of processes and, thus, provide cost savings and other benefits for organizations. Investments in DBE are intended to add value through business automation and are key decisions in building up information logistics integration. Business solutions that build on automation are important sources of value in networks that promote and support business relations and transactions. Value is created through improved productivity and effectiveness when new, more efficient collaboration methods are discovered and integrated into DBE. Organizations, business networks and collaborations, even with competitors, form DBE in which information logistics integration has a significant role as a value driver. However, traditional economic and computing theories do not focus on digital business ecosystems as a separate form of organization, and they do not provide conceptual frameworks that can be used to explore digital business ecosystems as value drivers—combined internal management and external coordination mechanisms for information logistics integration are not the current practice of a company’s strategic process. In this thesis, we have developed and tested a framework to explore the digital business ecosystems developed and a coordination model for digital business ecosystem integration; moreover, we have analysed the value of information logistics integration. The research is based on a case study and on mixed methods, in which we use the Delphi method and Internetbased tools for idea generation and development. We conducted many interviews with key experts, which we recoded, transcribed and coded to find success factors. Qualitative analyses were based on a Monte Carlo simulation, which sought cost savings, and Real Option Valuation, which sought an optimal investment program for the ecosystem level. This study provides valuable knowledge regarding information logistics integration by utilizing a suitable business process information model for collaboration. An information model is based on the business process scenarios and on detailed transactions for the mapping and automation of product, service and information flows. The research results illustrate the current cap of understanding information logistics integration in a digital business ecosystem. Based on success factors, we were able to illustrate how specific coordination mechanisms related to network management and orchestration could be designed. We also pointed out the potential of information logistics integration in value creation. With the help of global standardization experts, we utilized the design of the core information model for B2B integration. We built this quantitative analysis by using the Monte Carlo-based simulation model and the Real Option Value model. This research covers relevant new research disciplines, such as information logistics integration and digital business ecosystems, in which the current literature needs to be improved. This research was executed by high-level experts and managers responsible for global business network B2B integration. However, the research was dominated by one industry domain, and therefore a more comprehensive exploration should be undertaken to cover a larger population of business sectors. Based on this research, the new quantitative survey could provide new possibilities to examine information logistics integration in digital business ecosystems. The value activities indicate that further studies should continue, especially with regard to the collaboration issues on integration, focusing on a user-centric approach. We should better understand how real-time information supports customer value creation by imbedding the information into the lifetime value of products and services. The aim of this research was to build competitive advantage through B2B integration to support a real-time economy. For practitioners, this research created several tools and concepts to improve value activities, information logistics integration design and management and orchestration models. Based on the results, the companies were able to better understand the formulation of the digital business ecosystem and the importance of joint efforts in collaboration. However, the challenge of incorporating this new knowledge into strategic processes in a multi-stakeholder environment remains. This challenge has been noted, and new projects have been established in pursuit of a real-time economy.

On Distributed Storage Codes

Distributed storage systems are studied. The interest in such system has become relatively wide due to the increasing amount of information needed to be stored in data centers or different kinds of cloud systems. There are many kinds of solutions for storing the information into distributed devices regarding the needs of the system designer. This thesis studies the questions of designing such storage systems and also fundamental limits of such systems. Namely, the subjects of interest of this thesis include heterogeneous distributed storage systems, distributed storage systems with the exact repair property, and locally repairable codes. For distributed storage systems with either functional or exact repair, capacity results are proved. In the case of locally repairable codes, the minimum distance is studied. Constructions for exact-repairing codes between minimum bandwidth regeneration (MBR) and minimum storage regeneration (MSR) points are given. These codes exceed the time-sharing line of the extremal points in many cases. Other properties of exact-regenerating codes are also studied. For the heterogeneous setup, the main result is that the capacity of such systems is always smaller than or equal to the capacity of a homogeneous system with symmetric repair with average node size and average repair bandwidth. A randomized construction for a locally repairable code with good minimum distance is given. It is shown that a random linear code of certain natural type has a good minimum distance with high probability. Other properties of locally repairable codes are also studied.

Load balancing in P2P smartphone based distributed IoT systems

With the new age of Internet of Things (IoT), object of everyday such as mobile smart devices start to be equipped with cheap sensors and low energy wireless communication capability. Nowadays mobile smart devices (phones, tablets) have become an ubiquitous device with everyone having access to at least one device. There is an opportunity to build innovative applications and services by exploiting these devices’ untapped rechargeable energy, sensing and processing capabilities. In this thesis, we propose, develop, implement and evaluate LoadIoT a peer-to-peer load balancing scheme that can distribute tasks among plethora of mobile smart devices in the IoT world. We develop and demonstrate an android-based proof of concept load-balancing application. We also present a model of the system which is used to validate the efficiency of the load balancing approach under varying application scenarios. Load balancing concepts can be apply to IoT scenario linked to smart devices. It is able to reduce the traffic send to the Cloud and the energy consumption of the devices. The data acquired from the experimental outcomes enable us to determine the feasibility and cost-effectiveness of a load balanced P2P smart phone-based applications.

Formal development of resilient distributed systems

Resilience is the property of a system to remain trustworthy despite changes. Changes of a different nature, whether due to failures of system components or varying operational conditions, significantly increase the complexity of system development. Therefore, advanced development technologies are required to build robust and flexible system architectures capable of adapting to such changes. Moreover, powerful quantitative techniques are needed to assess the impact of these changes on various system characteristics. Architectural flexibility is achieved by embedding into the system design the mechanisms for identifying changes and reacting on them. Hence a resilient system should have both advanced monitoring and error detection capabilities to recognise changes as well as sophisticated reconfiguration mechanisms to adapt to them. The aim of such reconfiguration is to ensure that the system stays operational, i.e., remains capable of achieving its goals. Design, verification and assessment of the system reconfiguration mechanisms is a challenging and error prone engineering task. In this thesis, we propose and validate a formal framework for development and assessment of resilient systems. Such a framework provides us with the means to specify and verify complex component interactions, model their cooperative behaviour in achieving system goals, and analyse the chosen reconfiguration strategies. Due to the variety of properties to be analysed, such a framework should have an integrated nature. To ensure the system functional correctness, it should rely on formal modelling and verification, while, to assess the impact of changes on such properties as performance and reliability, it should be combined with quantitative analysis. To ensure scalability of the proposed framework, we choose Event-B as the basis for reasoning about functional correctness. Event-B is a statebased formal approach that promotes the correct-by-construction development paradigm and formal verification by theorem proving. Event-B has a mature industrial-strength tool support { the Rodin platform. Proof-based verification as well as the reliance on abstraction and decomposition adopted in Event-B provides the designers with a powerful support for the development of complex systems. Moreover, the top-down system development by refinement allows the developers to explicitly express and verify critical system-level properties. Besides ensuring functional correctness, to achieve resilience we also need to analyse a number of non-functional characteristics, such as reliability and performance. Therefore, in this thesis we also demonstrate how formal development in Event-B can be combined with quantitative analysis. Namely, we experiment with integration of such techniques as probabilistic model checking in PRISM and discrete-event simulation in SimPy with formal development in Event-B. Such an integration allows us to assess how changes and di erent recon guration strategies a ect the overall system resilience. The approach proposed in this thesis is validated by a number of case studies from such areas as robotics, space, healthcare and cloud domain.

A software engineering approach to distributed systems for composite modeling

The goal of this thesis is to define and validate a software engineering approach for the development of a distributed system for the modeling of composite materials, based on the analysis of various existing software development methods. We reviewed the main features of: (1) software engineering methodologies; (2) distributed system characteristics and their effect on software development; (3) composite materials modeling activities and the requirements for the software development. Using the design science as a research methodology, the distributed system for creating models of composite materials is created and evaluated. Empirical experiments which we conducted showed good convergence of modeled and real processes. During the study, we paid attention to the matter of complexity and importance of distributed system and a deep understanding of modern software engineering methods and tools.

Distributed energy resources in an electricity retailer’s short-term profit optimization

Liberalization of electricity markets has resulted in a competed Nordic electricity market, in which electricity retailers play a key role as electricity suppliers, market intermediaries, and service providers. Although these roles may remain unchanged in the near future, the retailers’ operation may change fundamentally as a result of the emerging smart grid environment. Especially the increasing amount of distributed energy resources (DER), and improving opportunities for their control, are reshaping the operating environment of the retailers. This requires that the retailers’ operation models are developed to match the operating environment, in which the active use of DER plays a major role. Electricity retailers have a clientele, and they operate actively in the electricity markets, which makes them a natural market party to offer new services for end-users aiming at an efficient and market-based use of DER. From the retailer’s point of view, the active use of DER can provide means to adapt the operation to meet the challenges posed by the smart grid environment, and to pursue the ultimate objective of the retailer, which is to maximize the profit of operation. This doctoral dissertation introduces a methodology for the comprehensive use of DER in an electricity retailer’s short-term profit optimization that covers operation in a variety of marketplaces including day-ahead, intra-day, and reserve markets. The analysis results provide data of the key profit-making opportunities and the risks associated with different types of DER use. Therefore, the methodology may serve as an efficient tool for an experienced operator in the planning of the optimal market-based DER use. The key contributions of this doctoral dissertation lie in the analysis and development of the model that allows the retailer to benefit from profit-making opportunities brought by the use of DER in different marketplaces, but also to manage the major risks involved in the active use of DER. In addition, the dissertation introduces an analysis of the economic potential of DER control actions in different marketplaces including the day-ahead Elspot market, balancing power market, and the hourly market of Frequency Containment Reserve for Disturbances (FCR-D).