B2B and Reseller Markets Essay

B2B and Reseller Markets Essay B2B and Reseller Markets Essay B2B and Reseller Markets Business-to-business (B2B) concept involves the aspect of decision-making in the majority of industry sectors (Hutt Speh, 2013). The majority of the collaborative business models in the modern times have made an effort to improve the face of marketing through the support of the B2B relationships amongst the entities. The application of the B2B also comes with challenges in the fulfillment of the negotiations and interactions imposed through the collaborative models in managing public business marketing processes (Hutt Speh, 2013). In this research, the description of the use of interaction protocols in defining and managing the processes in B2B relationships forms the core subject. The advancement of technology has enabled businesses conduct marketing electronically facilitating the existence of the Business-to-Business (B2B) E-Commerce (Hutt Speh, 2013). In some of the B2B relationships, the aspect of interaction forms significant challenge. The interactions within the B2B framework occur in three vital layers including content, communication, and business process. Internet-centered B2B related business models are effective in conducting business-to-business (B2B) commerce in the majority of the industry sectors. As one of the instantaneous mediums, the development of technology provides the business entities with new and improvised electronic marketplaces (Hutt Speh, 2013). Business Processes In the layer of business process, the B2B relationships necessitate the management of two distinct business processes including public processes and private processes (Hutt Speh, 2013). The private processes forms part of the enterprise itself managed through each enterprise in an independent way. The private processes receive support within the enterprises through a traditional Workflow Management System, proprietary systems or the ERP systems (Meyer, 2007). The public processes enable the spanning of the organizational boundaries following the involvement with the enterprises involved in the B2B relationship. The processes are under joint management and agreed on by the partners (Meyer, 2007). The activities of the public process have an abstract nature with the support of the private processes. As a clear distinction aid, the public and private processes enable the corresponding organizations abstract the internal process management from the respective management processes across enterprises. The collaborative business models usage have been proposed under several application domains including the supply chain management. The collaborative models have the support of B2B relationship with the inclusion of public business processes jointly managed through partner organizations (Meyer, 2007). Some of the collaborative models necessitate the businesses to establish autonomous B2B with the partners enabling the organizations collaboration. From the perspective of marketing, the collaborative models impose significant challenges in support of the management of the public business processes involved in B2B relationships and they are: Autonomy, the enterprises should have the ability to behave as relative autonomous entities, hiding their internal activities, decisions, and processes (Meyer, 2007). The information system in the management of B2B relationships in the enterprises should have independence. Decentralized management of the corresponding business processes through the enterprises joint management. Peer-to-peer interactions within the enterprises systems for the management of the B2B relationships to imply that the systems interact in a direct means without the independent third party system mediation Negotiation is inclusive in the management of the public processes. Although the proposal of web service composition and workflow approaches still stands in the management of the public processes, there are shortcomings presented in the achievement of autonomy, decentralization, negotiation, and P2P interaction capabilities. B2B Relationships Interaction Protocols The interaction protocols have been in the long run used in the major area of multi-agent systems for the representation of interactions among the involved agents (Hutt Speh, 2013). In B2B context of relationships, interaction protocol enables the management and modeling of the interactions among the involved enterprises in the B2B relationship. The interactions represent the business processes of the public that the enterprises agreed on the aspect of collaboration. Through this means, adapting the concept to the B2B relationships, an interaction protocol enables the description of the high-level communication pattern (Hutt Speh, 2013). This is through the admissible message sequence amid the enterprises playing different roles. The major objective of the interaction protocols is the abstraction of the public processes from specified services involved within the enterprises framework. This is for executing the supported public services internal activities (Hutt Speh, 2013). Within the system, different interaction protocols have one of the highest abstraction levels. An interaction protocol message does not represent the message on the business network. Interaction protocol message in implemented through the application of a lower-level protocol-involving network set of messages (Meyer, 2007). According to B2B three layers application, the interaction protocols transpire in the business process layer with the communication protocols occurring in the layer of communication. The major elements in the interaction protocol include messages, roles, control flows, conditions, deadlines, and logical connectors (Meyer, 2007). The roles are the responsibility in terms of the message sequence the enterprises performs in the B2B relationship. Messages involve the expression of the interactions containing the semantics defining their form. A message can be a representation of the decision, business information, acceptation, acknowledgement, proposal, and rejection. The messages can be of the asynchronous forms or synchronous. Conditions are defined as the messages to represent when messages can be sent (Meyer, 2007). The interaction protocol has two significant control flows. One of the control flows represents messages control flow defining the parallel or the alternative messages of the interaction protocol steps (Meyer, 2007). The second flow is a representation of the internal execution flow of the role describing the different reactions. These are of the roles to the incoming messages. The basic logical connectors are applicable in defining the control flows with deadline defined on the messages that represents time a role sends a message (Hutt Speh, 2013). B2B Standards and Interaction Protocols The B2B standards enable the exchange of messages amongst the enterprises in the B2B relationship. B2B standards are also utilized in the implementation and the exchange of messages defining interaction protocols (Kurtz, 2014). The enterprises should consider an agreement on the B2B standard to be applicable in exchanging the interaction messages. This is to enable the enterprises implement different and independent systems for the joint execution of similar interaction protocols (Kurtz, 2014). This is without the application of the proprietary communication protocol at a lower level. The B2B standards are large in number and consist of the following specification elements: A machine-process able definition language for defining the public processes An exchange sequence defining the transactions possible as required through every message and the constraints of the specified message, performance and like time-outs The business documents structure involved in the content of the message The form in which the messages are packaged and transported on the corresponding networks through specified communication protocols including SMTP and HTTP Messages Security Mechanisms All the B2B standard elements necessitate the implementation of the interaction protocols. Some of the standards specify only the elements defining the business documents (Pride et al, 2007). The rest of the B2B standards enable the specification of the required elements. The implementation of a message using the B2B standards enables each of the interaction protocol messages to consist of more messages. The transaction messages enable the keeping of the message as a unit through the application of responses. In the business transactions, one of the roles performs the requesting of the specified activity with the other one performing the responding activity (Pride Ferrell, 2007). The B2B relationships are under the management of public and private entities with an explicit separation between the private and public processes managed in an independent means (Pride Ferrell, 2007). The modeling of the public business process through an interaction protocol of the B2B relationships focuses on the messages enterprises exchanges for interaction and message orchestration. The interaction protocols facilitates greater enterprise autonomy in marketing framework since the enterprises hides internal activities, decisions and services necessitated for supporting public processes (Pride Ferrell, 2007). Public Business Processes Modeling with Interaction Protocols In the B2B perspective of modeling interaction protocols, the two languages necessary includes the textual modeling language and the graphical language modeling (Villarreal et al, 2003). The former provides the intuitive semantics that enables the business marketing process designers understand and define the public process for interaction representation between partners. The second language enables the enterprises exchange the interaction protocol descriptions. They can be understood and process able through the information system of the B2B relationships for the interaction protocol execution (Villarreal, Salomone, and Chiotti, 2003). The major difference that exists between the interaction protocols and the other approaches for public processes modeling is the interaction protocols not defining the services or activities (Kurtz, 2014). The modeling of the process with the aspect of the interaction protocols draws the focus on the messages sent and received through the roles of the enterprise in every step of the process. For exemplifying the interaction protocol modeling, capacity planning and collaborative planning processes are defined through a partner-partner collaborative model. The collaborative model carries out the business process amongst the enterprises manufacturing belonging to different chains of supply in the market (Kurtz, 2014). The model has a public business process carried out jointly by partners in a decentralized procedure. The collaborative model necessitates the enterprise establishment of an independent B2B relationship with the partners (Kurtz, 2014). Conclusion Interaction protocols in the B2B relationships perspective enable the management and modeling of public business processes consideration through autonomous and heterogeneous partners. This is for the relative achievement of B2B relationships goals. The protocols provide an abstraction framework level for modeling interactions that represents public processes. With the models of the B2B relationships, the messages exchanged by the corresponding enterprises are significant. The protocols of B2B also enable the implementation of interaction protocol for marketing systems fulfilling the collaborative business models requirements. IMP communicative acts facilitate the definition of the B2B relationship interaction protocols without the consideration of the B2B standards applicable in the implementation process. Achieving the independence between the B2B standards and interaction protocols is possible. The independence provides several of the benefits to the business marketing practice. The enterprises have the ability to carry out implementation programs of the interaction protocol with their networks with different partners using B2N standards of different versions. The communicative acts also enable the B2B standards joint functionality for the provision of advanced solutions to the B2B environments. This enables the marketing enterprise systems supporting the B2B relationships to facilitate the understanding of same interaction protocol independent of the technologies used in building them. Visit our online essay writing service to get professional writing help from academic experts who are hired to produce high-quality custom essays from scratch!

Business Process Management Challenges in Implementing Change Management in Employees

Business Process Management Challenges in Implementing Change Management in Employees Introduction Business process management is a management approach that aims at optimizing and synchronizing all management strategies to enhance the effectiveness and efficiency of business. Since organizations have numerous strategies that enable them to perform their businesses, business management process is an effective and efficient management approach that guarantees optimal performance.Advertising We will write a custom report sample on Business Process Management: Challenges in Implementing Change Management in Employees specifically for you for only $16.05 $11/page Learn More For a long period, many organizations have been grappling with challenges of enhancing product quality, satisfying customers, delivery of services and goods in time to markets as well as motivating employees to adopt and adapt changing business environments. However, emergence of business process management has enabled many organizations to cope with numerous challenges that th ey encounter in the process of enhancing their management strategies and performance of employees. Concerning strategies, which enhance organizational performance, management usually encounter numerous challenges because employees tend to resist changes. Bovey and Hede argue that employees undergo reaction process when they experience organizational change that involves four phases viz. â€Å"initial denial, resistance, gradual exploration and eventual commitment† (534). Thus, the management needs to understand resistance that employees exhibit when they experience organizational changes and develop effective strategies of counteracting it. Basing on business process management, this report examines challenges that organizations face when implementing organizational change management in employees. Exposition of Concepts Given that a business is a set of activities or processes that aim at achieving certain organizational objectives, business process management is an encompass ing approach of optimizing and synchronizing these activities to enhance the effectiveness and efficiency of an organization to adapt dynamics of the business world. Objective of business process management is to be certain that all strategies and duties that an organization employs in conducting its business perform optimally in various aspects. Due to diversity of aspects in which business process management is applicable in an organization, different types of frameworks do exist in contemporary markets. As employees are central components in an organization, application of business process management is critical in enhancing their performance. Thus, a framework that deals with employees exists and is applicable in most organizations. Aladwani asserts that enterprise resource planning is a framework that aids various aspects of the organization to share knowledge and data, improve management process and reduce costs (266). Application of suitable and effective framework is critica l in improving performance of an organization. Thus, business process management is essential in enhancing effectiveness and efficiency of various management factors and strategies.Advertising Looking for report on business economics? Let's see if we can help you! Get your first paper with 15% OFF Learn More Corporate world is constantly changing compelling organizations to adapt to new dynamics of business. To cope with myriad changes, organizations have adopted different strategies of change management. Change management involves systematic process of implementing technological advances, financial management and sharing of knowledge among organizational members. For organizations to survive and progress, they must adopt and adapt to changing dynamics of the business world. Conventionally, change management consists of processes, techniques, tools and actions for managing human resources to keep abreast with changing business environment. Aladwani argues th at, for management to cope with the challenge of workers’ resistance, it must employ framework of â€Å"knowledge formulation, strategy implementation and status evaluation† (269). Knowledge formulation involves identification of individuals’ attitudes, beliefs and interests relative to resistance. Strategy implementation entails setting up of strategies to convince and persuade employees to adopt them, while status evaluation consists of assessing and monitoring change management to ensure achievement of desired outcomes. Overall, change management is a continuous update and monitoring of organizational changes to ensure that they are in tandem with business dynamics. However, numerous challenges exist in implementing change management in employees. Resistance to Change Resistance to change is a considerable challenge that management face in implementing change management. Usually, management perceive resistance to change from the perspective of organizational members who decline to adopt organizational change. Resistance to change is a normal process that employees experience when they encounter new challenges in the course of their duties. According to Bovey and Hede, resistance occurs in employees because they tend to maintain complacent status rather than adapt to organizational changes (534). Although individual employees differ in their resistance and ability to adapt organization change, their collective resistance poses significant change to management in implementing various strategies. While some employees undergo a process of change quickly, some employees stagnate, and thus pose significant resistance to organizational change. Concerning change management, resistance to change is a significant factor that is attributable to failure of change programs that management of many organizations implements. As the resistance of employees is a significant hindrance to effective change management, many organizations are grappling to all eviate resistance. Hence, implementation of change management is a rigorous and painstaking process that requires effective strategies of overcoming resistance of employees. Employees perceive organizational changes as a threat to professional norms they have adopted for many years. Normally, professional experiences make employees experts in their varied fields, but organizational changes take them to the drawing board where they need to begin learning new skills and the way of performing their duties. For instance, introduction of technology into organization compels many employees to acquire new skills and knowledge lest their services become irrelevant to their respective organizations.Advertising We will write a custom report sample on Business Process Management: Challenges in Implementing Change Management in Employees specifically for you for only $16.05 $11/page Learn More In this view, employees perceive organizational change as a threat to their professional development because it diminishes their importance to the organization. Given that the prime objective of employees to develop their careers, organizational changes that seem to threaten their careers face much resistance compared to the ones that promote their careers. Resistance to change emanate from individual, group and organizational factors. Organizational factors are threats that originate from unfavourable organizational changes in a structure that affect the normal functioning in an organization. According to Chew, Cheng, and Petrovic-Lazarevic, group factors affect social norms and cohesiveness among employees by disrupting organizational culture that is critical for effective adaptation of organizational change (59). Comparatively, individual factors consist of elements of personality such as attitudes, emotions and feelings about organizational changes. Thus, these factors impose significant threats to workers making them resist organizational changes becau se they change their careers. Resistance to change also emanate from fears of unknown. Employees naturally have fears of unknown changes in the organization because they panic when confronting challenges. Since organizational changes can be radical in that they compel employees to adopt new skills and adapt new working environment, they elicit fears of the unknown. When employees do not know essence and scope of organizational changes, they tend to develop fears of the unknown since they are unsure of how changes affect their careers, duties, knowledge and skills. Chew, Cheng, and Petrovic-Lazarevic explain that adaptation to change is mainly a personal issue as organizational change cause uncertainty, doubt and factor-fears among employees (59). Thus, for organizations to effect organizational change successfully, they must ensure that they dispel fears associated with change among employees. Therefore, fear of unknown that employees have regarding organizational change poses signi ficant resistance to implementation of change management. Change Creates Conflict Organizational change at times creates conflict in roles that employees hold in an organization. In the organizational environment, individuals perceive change from one perspective while departments perceive from another, thus also perception of their roles. Disparity in perception of organizational change creates a conflict among diverse roles. If the change causes individuals’ roles to contradict departmental roles, employees experience substantial difficulties in adopting new strategies due to organizational changes.Advertising Looking for report on business economics? Let's see if we can help you! Get your first paper with 15% OFF Learn More Since the conflict in roles among employees, managers and executives create conflict; it affects organizational performance and change management. According to Chew, Cheng, and Petrovic-Lazarevic, conflicts among employees and managers create resistance to change that impedes effective implementation of change management (63). A conflict in an organization is inevitable since numerous changes occur that requires employees to adopt new strategies that may contradict previous strategies. Thus, organizations should implement change management cautiously while ensuring that roles of employees, managers and executives do conflict and create unnecessary resistance to change. Implementation of change management also causes conflict in resources that are central to effective performance by employees. Employees usually share a great deal of resources in which organizational change disrupt or destabilize normal utilization. Disruption of normal utilization of resources triggers conflict among employees that act as an impediment in the implementation of organizational change. Bovey and Hede explain that although organization spend a huge amount of money in implementing organizational change, they do not consider diverse interests of employees, thus creating a conflict that leads to resentment among employees (535). In this case, poor allocation of resources due to biasness of management creates conflicts that affect implementation of change management. Therefore, it is vital for management to consider proper allocation of resources when implementing organizational change to realize optimal performance and alleviate occurrence of conflict among employees and managers. Differences in personalities reflect variation in values and interests that employees have regarding their responsibilities and organizational change. When organizations want to implement change management, they encounter challenges that emanate from conflicts that occur between organizational values and per sonal values. Given that employees tend to be conservative when adopting and applying new strategies, management normally experience a daunting task in changing personalities of employees to keep abreast with organizational changes that are critical for development. However, change management seems to focus more on organizational factors than human factors when implementing change, hence causing conflict between employees and organizational management. Aladwani advices that for organizations to implement changes effectively, they must consider involving employees in the process of change because they play a significant role in effecting required changes (270). In this case, management needs to effect organizational change by consulting and communicating widely with employees to ease any source of conflict that stem from variation in organizational and personal values and interests. Thus, management faces challenges when harmonizing organizational values with personal values when imp lementing organizational change. Dimensions of Change Organizations also face challenges when implementing change management due to organizational structure. Some organizations have stringent and bureaucratic structure that restricts employees from adopting and adapting organizational changes according to their own perceptions and convictions. Usually, these organizations rely on rules, policies and procedures that are extremely restrictive to allow employees to comply with organizational changes in their own pace. Thus, employees perceive these organizations as if they are imposing changes into their careers and prevent them from advancing according to their own interests. In contrast, some organizations are too liberal, for they lack proper rules, policies and procedures to guide employees to adopt and adapt organizational changes effectively. In these organizations, it is extremely hard to effect organizational changes because there are no structures and frameworks to enhance occ urrence of changes. Aladwani argues that organizations must have policies and legislations for them to convince and persuade employees to adopt and implement necessary changes in an organization (272). However, lack of appropriate policies and legislations as well as their stringent presence hampers effective change management in organizations. Thus, it is critical for organizations to ensure that they have appropriate and relevant policies and legislations to enhance participation of employees in effecting organizational change. Degree of organizational change is significant in determining challenges of implementing changes. While some changes are expansive and rigorous, others require minimal implementation that does not cause significant changes in an organization and among employee. Ideally, expansive and rigorous changes are hard to implement because employees find it hard to adopt and adapt. Moreover, comprehensive changes are exceedingly costly in terms of resources because t hey compel employees to acquire more information and tactics so that they can precisely adapt complex organizational changes. Since the degree of change determines the extent of learning among employees, comprehensive changes oblige employees to acquire more knowledge and skills as a way of coping with organizational changes. According to Bovey and Hede, significant organizational change causes anxiety among employees, which deters effective implementation of change management (545). Thus, significant organizational change poses enormous challenges in implementation of critical changes among employees. Moreover, nature of change reflects challenges of implementing change management. Since organizational change normally occurs at various levels of organization, they have different impacts on employees. Changes that occur at top management tend to have considerable impact on employees as compared to changes that occur at lower management levels. Thus, management struggles in harmonizi ng changes that occur at various levels within the organization. Additionally, implementation of change within an organization is a gradual process that requires patience and persistence of management to realize intended purpose of change. Chew, Cheng, and Petrovic-Lazarevic assert implementation of organizational change is a gradual process that needs progressive engagement of employees (60). Proper engagement of employees enhances their participation in implementation of organizational change. Thus, management experiences enormous challenges in trying to expedite change management to achieve required objectives within the shortest time possible. Conclusion Organizations encounter numerous challenges in the course of implementing their policies, legislations and procedures that aim at effecting a given change. To cope with these challenges of organizational change, organizations use strategies of business process management to implement change management effectively. Despite the av ailability of diverse strategies of effecting change, organizations usually experience a great deal of challenges that stem from employees such as resistance to change, occurrence of conflicts and complex dimensions of change. Basing on these challenges, it is evident that employees create a great deal of challenges that hinder organizations from making marked changes in their progress. Overall, these challenges pose significant threats to effective change management. Thus, management needs to consider involving employees as central players in implementation of change as a gradual process progress that is inherent to any organization. Aladwani, Adel. â€Å"Change Management Strategies for Successful ERP Implementation.†Ã‚  Business Process Management Journal 7.3 (2006): 266-275. Bovey, Wayne, and Andrew Hede. â€Å"Resistance to Organizational Change: the Role of Defence Mechanisms.† Journal of Managerial Psychology 16.7 (2001): 534-548. Chew, Mindy, Joseph Cheng and Sonja Petrovic-Lazarevic. â€Å"Managers’ Role in Implementing Organizational Change: Case of the Restaurant Industry in Melbourne.† Journal of Global Business and Technology 2.1 (2006): 58-67.

Operations Management Case Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words

Operations Management Case - Essay Example Aggregate planning, a medium-range capacity planning system that typically covers a time horizon of anywhere from 3 to 18 months, has as its goal that of achieving a production plan that effectively utilizes the firm’s resources to satisfy expected demand. Decisions have to be made on output rates, employment and inventory levels and changes, back orders, and subcontracting, in effect determining not only the output levels planned but also the appropriate resource input mix to be used. Before we tackle the solution, we summarize the basic assumptions for our calculations. Basic Assumptions Table 1 contains the 12-month demand forecast and our assumptions. Aside from the total output, number of workers, cost assumptions, and labor force parameters given in the problem, we would like to highlight some key assumptions not indicated in the statement of the problem but which have an effect on the solution. The first is the capacity cushion, which determines how much excess inventory we would like to have at the end of the month to act as a buffer for potential variations in demand. A high cushion level would entail inventory costs, while a low level would entail stock-out costs that were neither given. The given initial inventory level of 200 units is equivalent to 22 percent of maximum demand (900 units in October) and 29 percent of year-end demand (600 units). Working on the principles of zero stock-outs and the maximization of resources, we calculated the standard deviation in monthly demand as plus or minus 20 percent and made the convenient assumption to keep the capacity cushion at this level of production capacity or roughly 100 units per month.

Being Assertive instead of Being Aggressive at Work, Being Proactive Essay - 1

Being Assertive instead of Being Aggressive at Work, Being Proactive in Your Career, How to Build Successful Work Teams, andNew Technology in the Workplace - Essay Example When going for a career start, it is important to understand the present day workplace. The 21st century workplace is diverse in terms of culture, race and gender; it is global. Employees must be prepared to deal with people from any part of the world confidently and without bias. One should enter a career with a positive attitude towards team work. Organizational success depends on team work and communication is the key to a good team spirit development. Career development in the world of new technology depends on one’s ability to adapt to the new technology. All individuals preparing for any career should keep the above points in mind in order to become successful professionals. Work place environment greatly affects the well being, health, productivity and motivation to work in the employees (Jones, 2001). Work place environment is a factor of the behavior of employees therefore it is up to them to maintain a healthy workplace environment. According to (Scott & Judge, 2006), the personal traits and the affective states experiences by people in organizational setups determine the quality of work place atmosphere. To play their role in contributing towards a healthy work place environment, one should enter any career after being well prepared to deal with the challenges of a work place (Jones. 2001). Self mastery, conquering control on persona; traits via personal and independent victories of self control is basic and very important if one wants to reach the level of interdependence in an organization (Covey, 1989). Assertiveness is the key to respectful survival in work place (Weinberg & Cooper, 2007). Assertiveness is sometimes confused with aggressiveness. In reality, there is a difference between the two. Aggression refers to pushing others to get what one wants, while assertiveness means to stand up for one’s rights, still respecting the

Marketing Exam Question (Marketing Mix) Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

Marketing Exam Question (Marketing Mix) - Essay Example So what is market segmentation? Consumers differ and they â€Å"place differing degrees of importance on the individual elements of the marketing mix.† â€Å"They differ not only in the price they will pay, but in a wide range of benefits they expect from the product and its method of delivery. As a result, the market becomes split into several segments.† (SBDC, 2005) SBDC, (2005) argued that understanding the concept of segmentation is central to marketing because each different customer group will require a different marketing mix strategy and that each segment will offer differing growth and profit opportunities so the trick is to deliver the best offer to the best segment. Assuming now that there is market segmentation, it is now easier to answer the question how to have differential advantage. SBDC, 2005 advised saying: â€Å"Differential advantage can be obtained via almost any element of the marketing mix - creating a superior product, more attractive designs, better service, more effective distribution, better advertising and so on. These are actually the three P’s which include the Product (creating a superior product, more attractive designs, better service), Place (more effective distribution) and Promotion (better advertising) The key is to understand that the advantage must be based on research into what customers really value and that the differential is developed after due consideration of competitive strategies and offers. (Emphasis supplied). With the three P’s strategically combined, the fourth P, which is Price, would be easier to handle. In fact the purpose of the differential advantage is to avoid mere competition based on price, because the customers look at the four P’s as four C’s. These four C’s include cost to the customer for price, convenience for place, communication for promotion and customer needs and wants for product. It must be noted that knowing what

Application Performance Optimization and Load Balancing

Application Performance Optimization and Load Balancing Application Performance Optimization and Load Balancing using RAID and Caching Techniques Akilesh Kailash Sunil Iyer Kolar Suresh Kumar Sabarish Venkatraman ABSTRACT As the data processing and demand for storage grows, the performance of a critical application should always be intact with respect to disk I/O. There has been considerable improvements related to disk seek, latency and spindle speeds; However, these improvements have not met the challenges and addresses the need for better performance and load balancing. The challenge of any Database administrator is to maximize the Application I/O performance and ensure the high availability with zero downtime. This performance challenge can be met using I/O monitoring, Load balancing, Cache management and RAID (Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks) technologies. The primary goal of this paper is to exemplify the details of successfully solving the I/O problems of a database application in a consistent fashion with the appropriate RAID configurations, caching mechanisms and load balancing algorithm. Categories and Subject Descriptors B.3.2 [Design Styles]: Mass storage – RAID. D.4.2 [Storage Management]: Secondary storage, Storage hierarchies. D.4.3 [File Systems Management]: File organization. D.4.4 [Communications Management]: Input/Output. D.4.5 [Reliability]: Backup procedures, Fault-tolerance. General Terms Algorithms, Performance, Design, Theory, Reliability. Keywords RAID Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks I/O – Input/Output DBA Database Administrators HA High Availability OLTP Online Transaction Processing. IOPS HBA 1. INTRODUCTION RAID technology addresses the need for higher storage capacity in IO system and provides the feature of data redundancy. This helps in efficient and improved disk access and avoids data loss by disk failures. Theoretically, RAID is mainly used to create a logical disk from two or more physical disk drives in order to provide high bandwidth. RAID is an imperative part of storage stack and fabric layer and is coordinated by various storage vendors like EMC, Hitachi, NetApp. RAID technologies have enumerated different methods in building storage stacks and sub-systems for different kinds of databases. Thus, the two main technical reasons for switching to RAID are scalability and high availability in the context of I/O and system performance. As the database sizes of today have grown manifold from the gigabytes to petabytes range, the intricacy to scale I/O performance of such gigantic systems is needed very much for critical applications. Load balancing is a critical factor in environments like Operating Systems, Clusters, Networking and Applications. They play a quintessential role in the performance and reliability of any environment avoiding catastrophic failures. In a quotidian scenario, the resource allocation and load balancing are done through hash methods, genetic algorithms and several scheduling algorithms in Operating systems. Many database applications demand high throughput and availability from storage subsystems. For instance, a stock market application running in New York stock exchange will need to have a high throughput and bandwidth with absolutely no downtime. This requires continuous operation i.e., the need to satisfy each I/O request even in the case of disk failures. It is not acceptable to meet the aforementioned requirements at the cost of deprived performance mainly in real-time applications such as video and audio. It is highly unacceptable if a video is played at slower speed or the data is lost during transmission and ends abruptly. Since a database application may encounter extreme I/O activity or suffer a sudden spike of I/O activities for a brief period of time, the organization of the database structure onto the disk becomes imperative. 2. PROBLEM DEFINITION Mission critical data centers have a compelling need to have highly available applications and services thereby ensuring zero downtime. Current clustering solutions, like MSCS or HP Service Guard enable HA for vital applications. However, such applications are specific and developed only for the OS/application for which they are designed. The I/O performance and their patterns of a database application has to be analyzed by understanding their relation with the physical storage so that it helps in determining the deployment of application based on any given workload. I/O from an application needs to be categorized based on which appropriate techniques can be used in order to improve its performance. There are many DBA tuning software which are primarily used for indexing the database and monitor the drive activities. This approach is effective but requires lot of time and in reality it is quite tedious in nature. 3. ABSTRACT SOLUTION The possible solutions are: Determining the RAID Level and stripe size RAID levels are determined on factors such as type of I/O, disk cost, read/write I/O and so on. The data transfer rate and IOPS performance is very much influenced based on the segment size chosen and the striping size used. For example: In a RAID 5 configuration, there are 4 disks and 1 parity disk. Let the segment size of each disk be 64KB. Thus, when an I/O of 64KB has to be addressed, it is written to the first drive. The next I/O of 64KB is written to next and so on and finally the parity of the 4 I/O’s is calculated and written to the last disk. In case of RAID 1 (Mirroring), there are 2 disk groups and 2 mirror groups. A 64KB I/O would be written to each of the disk drives and mirrored drives. Caching techniques Splitting the cache The cache acts as an interface between the host application and RAID controllers. The cache can be divided into two parts viz. front-end and back-end. Database applications can rely on the front-end cache. Prefetching OLTP applications may have I/O operations which are not sequential; the pre-fetch algorithm confirms the addresses which will fetched in future and loads it in memory. The amount of data to be pre-fetched depends on the application requirement, memory and performance desired by application. Database organization on a storage system Organizing the database objects such as tables, logs, views on storage layout comes in a wide range. Based on the structure of the database layout, an appropriate storage is chosen. Load Balancing I/O load balancing across cluster nodes are performed using regression analysis. If a port of an HBA or fabric node is loaded heavily, then the I/O is balanced across the ports which are not utilized to its full potential. 4. LITERATURE SURVEY I/O performance and disk I/O contention plays a vital role for critical applications. Our proposal and work on application performance monitoring and I/O tuning and load balancing is motivated based on the â€Å"Oracle I/O Performance† and â€Å"Array tuning Best Practices† paper. The proposed solution and enhancements are based on similar lines of these papers. We start off the survey by explaining the technical feasibilities, the pros and cons of these approaches discussed in the papers and explain in brief about the issue we are addressing based on the survey findings. 5. PERFORMANCE BOTTLENECKS Application performance and write access is generally obtained by using storage Arrays having different RAID configurations. For instance, the striping of data across multiple disks using RAID 1 in order to achieve redundancy is the most common way of obtaining high availability. Disk failure vulnerabilities in enterprise storage The main motivation of going for striping technologies is because of the vulnerability in disk failures in enterprise storage Arrays which can result in catastrophic loss of data. This high availability of application and I/O is obtained at the cost of write performance. Keeping synch of write operations During a write operation, all the writes have to be updated simultaneously to all the disks in order to keep the disks in synch. This will have a catastrophic result in operations which will have heavy writes and its performance. In addition to it, maintaining the synchronization of data between all disks and achieving concurrency is a difficult task and can lead to system crashes. In order to overcome the aforementioned problems; a number of different striping mechanisms have been proposed; each of them have their specific tradeoff based on cost, high performance, scalability and robustness. The majority of RAID configurations are based on the interleaving of the data and the pattern is which the redundant information is distributed across the disks. Load Balancing of I/O and resource utilization Load balancing is essentially implemented in SQL server clustering and is very common practice. There are many third party tools that provide solutions to load balancing and resource utilization; however the limitations of such tools is that the factors to decide on load balancing are very system specific and are dependent heavily on the characteristic of each application. As the database size grows in a short period, we generally observe that the query speed has a performance hit as the number of rows increases. This is mainly observed on applications where the performance data is being collected in frequent intervals and simultaneously the data is read from the DB for other purposes. The general and quick solutions to optimize query speed it to partition the views, indexing and table partitioning. But even then, things are observed to be quite slow. The main problem with such solutions is that the database tables and views are located on different servers. Hence a server cluster is used which add in reliability if there is any performance issues seen on one of the cluster nodes. 6. RAID LEVEL SELECTION CRITERIA The choice of RAID level to be chosen is based on different factors. When a mirrored configuration is chosen such as RAID 1 or RAID 1+0, each write request is duplicated to disk by the raid controller. This results in performance issues if the application does not rely heavily on data duplication and its availability. When higher levels/parity based RAID configuration is used, things get more intricate. Let us consider that, when RAID 5 or RAID 6 is used and if the size of the write I/O is less than the stripe size which is frequently observed in database applications where the data write is around 4kb pages contrasting to the drive size of around 128KB; as a result of this, the raid controller has to perform magnitude of I/O operations for just a single request. The main drawback of the above technique is that for a small write request, the raid controller has to first fetch the data from the back end disk to the main memory. Then it has to insert the fresh data at the appropriate position and calculate the new parity stripe to perform another write operation back to the disk. Hence, one I/O operation results in roughly 3 to 4 times the IOPS. This overhead adds in if the calculation of parity is for two sets as in RAID 6. The other factors of choosing the RAID configuration are the disk/drive cost and I/O pattern. The cost is zero for RAID 0 as there is no redundancy; while it is highest for RAID 1 or its combination such as RAID 10. This cost is high because of drive mirroring. The cost of RAID 5 is comparatively lower than RAID 1 but it has one disk which is dedicated for parity. A cleared distinction is required to classify small I/O and large I/O. The bursty nature and large I/O is seen if the request for the I/O is more than the one third of the cache size. All the small/short I/O’s are addressed in cache thereby avoiding the RAID access. All in all, RAID 5 and 6 are generally preferred for large I/O and sequential I/O operations while RAID 1 and RAID 10 is preferred for short I/O operations. 7. SCOPE FOR IMPROVEMENT This paper goes on the aforementioned aspects and concentrates on monitoring the I/O pattern, analyzing the load on each of the I/O and performing a load balance if required; In addition to the above criteria, taking the I/O pattern into consideration, an appropriate RAID configuration along with write-back cache method is used if necessary. 8. PROPOSED SOLUTION Characterize the I/O pattern The first step is to monitor the I/O and characterize it. This is done using tools such as Perfmon or IO Meter. We plan to use these tools and analyze the I/O pattern of a given application. This monitoring of pattern is required as we will characterize the request as read intensive, write intensive, how the load is being varied. Perform load balancing upon I/O threshold The second step is to perform load balancing. This is done by analyzing the load and identifying the threshold of the I/O from a server HBA Port through the fabric layer to the storage Array. Threshold is a boundary which serves as a benchmark for comparison or guidance, and any deviation or breach of the said threshold may result in a change in state of an overall system. Our proposed infrastructure identifies the threshold by analyzing the I/O graph and monitoring the following parameters: Linear Regression Slope of the curve Using Linear Regression, the value of the slope is calculated. Based on these two parameters, if we observe that if one of the HBA ports is heavily loaded, we tend to balance it out by redistributing the excess load to different cluster nodes. Once the I/O is balanced, an appropriate RAID configuration is calculated. 9. CONCLUSION AND FUTURE WORK After studying the I/O access patterns of various workloads, we can clearly the map the database application to the physical storage thereby achieving high performance, fast access and retrieval. This would be helpful for DBA’s to deploy management applications and would be easy to track the application performance. This analysis can be implemented at the enterprise level configuration as well resulting in efficient usage of physical storage, making it cost effective and reducing the work for DBA’s or lab administrators. 10. REFERENCES The RAID Book: Sixth Edition. RAID Advisory Board. LACIE: RAID Technology White Paper. RAID: High-Performance, Reliable Secondary Storage – ACM Computing Surveys Peter M. Chen, Edward K. Lee. Array tuning best practices A Dell technical white paper DOI=http://www.dell.com/downloads/global/products/pvaul/en/powervault-md3200i-performance-tuning-white-paper.pdf. Exploring Disk Size and Oracle Disk I/O performance DOI= http://www.openmpe.com/cslproceed/HPW02CD/paper/11026.pdf

Native Son Essay: The Tragedy -- Native Son Essays

Native Son: The Tragedy  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚        Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   Richard Wright's Native Son a very moving novel. Perhaps this is largely due to Wright's skillful merging of his narrative voice with Bigger's which allows the reader to feel he is also inside Bigger's skin. There is no question that Bigger is a tragic figure, even an archetypical one, as he represents the African American experience of oppression in America. Wright states in the introduction, however, that there are Biggers among every oppressed people throughout the world, arguing that many of the rapidly changing and uncertain conditions of the modern world, a modern world largely founded on imperialism and exploitation, have created people like Bigger, restless and adrift, searching for a place for themselves in a world that, for them, has lost many of its cultural and spiritual centers. Because Wright chose to deal with the experience he knew best, Native Son is an exploration of how the pressure and racism of the American cultural environment affects black peop le, their feelings, thoughts, self-images, in fact, their entire lives, for one learns from Native Son that oppression permeates every aspect of life for both the oppressed and oppressor, though for one it is more overt than the other. Though this paper deals with Bigger's character and how the last scene of the novel reflects an evolution and realization in his character in terms of Arthur Miller's definition of tragedy, the issue of mass oppression of one people by another embodies the dimensions of a larger tragedy that is painfully embedded within human history.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   Many of Native Son's earlier scenes serve Wright's purposes in showing how America's white rascism affects Bigger's behavior, his thinking and... ...rd Wright's Art of Tragedy. Iowa City: U of Iowa Press, 1986. Kinnamon, Keneth and Michel Fabre, eds. Conversations with Richard Wright. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1993. Kinnamon, Keneth. The Emergence of Richard Wright: A Study Literature and Society. Urbana: U of Illinois P, 1973. Kinnamon, Keneth, ed. New Essays on Native Son. New York: Cambridge UP, 1990. Macksey, Richard and Frank E. Moorer, eds. Richard Wright: A Collection of Critical Essays. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1984. Margolies, Edward. The Art of Richard Wright. Carbondale: Southern Illinois UP, 1969. Miller, Eugene E. Voice of a Native Son: The Poetics of Richard Wright. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1990. Rampersad, Arnold, ed. Richard Wright: A Collection of Critical Essays. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1995.      

Expulsion of Moors

In 1492, Isabella I of Castile and Ferdinand II conducted a terms in which Muslims are allowed to preserve their mosques and religious institutions, to retain the use of their language and to continue to abide by their own laws and customs. But within seven years these terms had been broken. The Moors, the descendants of the Muslim population, were given a choice between to convert to Christianity or exile. For the majority, baptism was the only practical option. So the Spanish Moors became the â€Å"New Christians† and subject to the jurisdiction of the Inquisition. The moors had to abandon the Arabic language, uncover their faces, and forced to let their doors opened. For most â€Å"new Christans†, their conversion weren’t absolute, the Moors act like Christian, but continued to practice Islam in secret. They lead a double life with a clear conscience because certain Islamic religious authorities allowed that, under a threat, Muslims might apply the principle of â€Å" TAQUIYA† . they may drink wine, eat pork and uncover their faces. A person who refused to drink wine or eat pork might be denounced as a Muslim to the Inquisition. In 1567 Philip II renewed an edict which had never been strictly enforced, making the use of Arabic illegal and prohibiting Islamic religion, dress and customs. This edict resulted in the Rebellion of the Alpujarras (1568-1570), which were suspected to corroborate with the Turks. During The uprising Moriscos get help from Turkish and Moroccan volunteers. The uprising was brutally suppressed by Don John of Austria. By the spring of 1571, the Moriscos were massacred and defeated. Some were killed and others were deported under inhumane conditions. Moors were suspected to corroborate with the Turks, a permanent solution by the inquisitions which to proceed with the expulsion of the Moors. On April 09, 1609, King Philip III of Spain decreed the Expulsion of the Moriscos. The Spanish government systematically forced Moriscos to leave the kingdom for Muslim North Africa. The majority of the forced emigrants settled in the Maghrib or Barbary Coast, especially in Oran, Tunis, Tlemcen, Tetuan, Rabat and Sale.

J.F.K. theories essays

J.F.K. theories essays What really happened on November 22, 1963? Nobody knows exactly what happened, that's what makes this story the greatest mystery of our time. The assassination changed the course of history, and the way that many people think about the government. There's much more involved here than the death of a president. Before visiting Dealey Plaza, viewing JFK movies and documentaries about the assassination, reading and visiting web sites on the subject. All we know for sure is that between 3 and 6 shots were fired, and that at least 2 of those shots came from the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository Building. To illustrate how our opinion has changed, we assigned probabilities (before in the table, below. Before After Oswald acted alone, there was no conspiracy 75% 45% Oswald fired all shots, but others were involved in a 5 0.4 Oswald and another shooter fired shots, as part of a 20 54 Oswald was part of a conspiracy, but did not fire 0 0.4 Oswald knew nothing about the assassination, and 0 ...

Alexander The Great

Alexander The Great Alexander did indeed change the world in the Eastern Hemisphere. He had many great accomplishments in his short life. The period 336-323 BC is inevitably designated the age of Alexander. It marked a huge expansion of imperial boundaries of Macedon, virtually unparalleled out pouring of resources materials and humans (4 Bosworth.) One of Alexander's large accomplishments was defeating the Persian kind Darius III. This was a good thing because it gave him more power and eventually causing tensions with his Macedonian and Greek officers because he had too much power. Soon they became a threat to there civilizations. They thought that he might take over there countries as well because of his massive amount of power he had he might get greedy and turn on them.Another Accomplishment of Alexander the Great was to control his own troops in a time of panic, also he stopped a revolution from breaking out.Perhaps from the pediment of his templeTowards the end, the Hellenic period of Greece had begun to transform itself and concentrate on different issues. The inhabitants of Greece took action to move forward before Alexander the Great came into existence.Tarn even said it himself in his own document. He wrote, "Even if much of the work was done by his successors, he broke the path; with out him they would not have been." Tarn gave too much of the credit to one individual of the time. Alexander received help from many people; he did not accomplish his dreams alone. He probably derived the credit from some historians with the fact that he was a great leader. He made an example of himself for people to follow. He was a hands on leader who gained...

Weight Loss Diets Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 3000 words

Weight Loss Diets - Essay Example High protein and low carbohydrate diets are available in different names and brands such as, Paleo, South Beach, Dukan, Atkins etc., but all are based on the common principle, i.e., to lower the carbohydrate consumption and consume large amount of protein by adding protein-rich foods like, meat, eggs, fish, and dairy products in diet (Kennedy, n.d). Over the last few years, many books on high protein and low carbohydrate diets altogether sold thousands of copies in the US. Advocates of high protein and low carbohydrate diets argue that these diets encourage the metabolism process of adipose tissue, resulting rapid weight loss without any adverse effect in long-run (Bravata et al. 2003, p. 1838). However, various professional organizations, like the American Heart Association and the American Dietetic Association, have warned against the excessive use of such diets. There are concerns that these type of diets focus on changing one’s metabolism and achieve weight loss by eating protein-rich foods and avoiding sources of carbohydrates which may cause the increase in blood sugar levels in the body due to gluconeogesis process. Gluconeogenesis turns protein into glucose by means of cortisol hormones. High level of cortisol causes rapid glucose production from protein, which results in high blood sugar level.Also, there are concerns that these diets can cause impaired metabolic functioning that may lead to serious medical problems, cardiovascular disease, hypertension, or dyslipidemia.

Personal Development planning Assignment Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Personal Development planning - Assignment Example Furthermore, to university students, it is a terrific way to take advantage of all the opportunities that university life has to offer. Alternatively, PDP can be a source of motivation when one’s interest starts to wane (Gosling, 2003). The main processes of the in PDP that help learners think about their study and make plans for the future are; reflection, recording, action planning, executing and evaluating. Reflection is the process of pulling ideas and different thoughts together so as to make sense of a purpose. In recording, one puts down ideas, thoughts and experiences, in order to evidence and understand the process and outcomes of learning. Action planning is setting out a plan, and this likely means achieving the goal. Executing is carrying out the activities which make up the plan of action. Finally, in evaluating one makes sense of what ha or she has been doing (Gosling, 2003). Computing This is a branch of engineering science that deals with the study of computabl e processes and structures with the aid of computers. In this module, students learn how to build and design software and hardware systems for a wide range of purposes; structuring, managing and processing various kinds of information. The study also involves doing performing scientific studies using computers and making operating systems of computers behave intelligently. In teaching this module, the lecturer did his best in using all the available teaching aids; charts, projectors and both the white and black boards. Since the module is more practical than theoretical, there were a lot of lab sessions to practise the skills acquired. Despite the complexity of the module, the lecturer did an admirable job in simplifying it and delivering it in a way that it was easily understandable by the class. The lecturer was positioned to offer close and personal attention to the class due to the relative size of the students. In addition, the students were focused and motivated making a reaso nable number of lectures enjoyable. The lecture’s teaching style was outstanding as he involved the class in the learning process, cracking jokes here and there to make sure that everybody was concentrating. The handouts that were produced concerning the module were clear and the notes well arranged. Mathematics This is the study of structure, quantity, change and space. The module teaches students how to look for patterns and make up with new conjectures. Mathematicians using mathematical skills resolve the falsity and truth of the new conjectures. Mathematics is a more practical than learning unit. It involves a lot of working through problems and exercises. In teaching this module, the lecturer did not use teaching aids, due to the nature of the subject, which based more on calculations than theory. The class for this unit was relatively small due to the general notion that mathematics is difficult and male dominated. Most of the students were male. The lecture opted for t eaching style, which encompasses doing a lot exercises and practises. In addition, to this the handouts that were available for the course were not that clear and their coverage was minimal. Table showing the importance of the above factors on scale of 1 to 10 for the procedural module Procedural module Subject Factors Nature of subject Class layout and constrains Number of students Diversity of students Teaching aids