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Despite several efforts during the last years, the web model and semantic web technologies have not yet been successfully applied to empower Ubiquitous Computing architectures in order to create knowledge‐rich environments populated by interconnected smart devices. In this paper we point out some problems of these previous initiatives and introduce SoaM (Smart Objects Awareness and Adaptation Model), an architecture for designing and seamlessly deploying web‐powered context‐aware semantic gadgets. Implementation and evaluation details of SoaM are also provided in order to identify future research challenges.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate concepts that are used in depicting future visions of society, as afforded by technology, to map the extent of their use, examine the level of their dominance in different research areas and geographic boundaries, identify potential overlaps, analyse their longitudinal growth, and examine whether any of the identified concepts has assumed an overarching position.

In total, 14 concepts, each of which is used to depict visions of future information infrastructures, were identified. More than 20,000 scholarly documents related to 11 of these concepts (those with 20 or more documents) are analysed by various qualitative/quantitative methods.

The concepts most referred to are semantic web and ubiquitous computing (all years), and internet of things (Year 2013). Publications on some newer concepts (e.g. digital living, real world internet) are minimal. There are variations in the extent of use and preferred concepts based on geographic and disciplinary boundaries. The overlap in the use of these terms is minimal and none of these terms has assumed an overarching umbrella position.

This study is limited to scholarly publications; it would be relevant to also study the pattern of usage in governmental communications and policy documents.

By mapping multiplicity of concepts and the dispersion of discussions, the authors highlight the need for, and facilitate, a broader discussion of related social and societal implications.

This paper is the first to present a collective of these related concepts and map the pattern of their occurrence and growth.

Modern technological solutions are rapidly changing the information landscape in library and information establishments. One such innovative solution that is gaining momentum in information centers is cloud computing. The purpose of this paper is to explore and compare opportunities and challenges of “cloud computing paradigm” in handling and supporting delivery of information services in university libraries in the face of the present hard economic situation and limited financial budgets.

The study is based on current academic literature, document analysis, several editorials and articles on the potential and challenges of cloud computing paradigm in university library and information centers.

Cloud computing is proving as the best management practice of salvaging information services in university libraries due to numerous competing challenges and issues in institutions of higher education. University libraries in developing countries face many challenges of inadequate information infrastructure, limited financial budgets, manpower issues and rapid changes in technological systems. In the context of hard economic times, cloud computing is critical in adding value as well as advancing the goals and objectives of modern university libraries. Cloud computing is the “best technology practice” that is poised to play crucial roles in enhancing quality provision and delivery of information services in university library and information centers. There are many competing challenges and claims, but potential benefits count more.

The study is based on the ideas of cloud services conceptualized from reading academic literature, document analysis, several editorials, articles and professional work experience. The paper identifies that cloud computing paradigm is useful in achieving the goals and objectives of university libraries in this hard economic situation facing institutions of higher learning.

The paper provides practical insights that cloud computing is the “must have technology” for modern university library and information centers already burdened with the demand to develop effective and efficient technological solutions due to subsequent changing needs of the digital information environment. This study is useful for university libraries, information professionals, information communication technology professionals and university management.

Cloud computing paradigm provides university libraries with the business opportunity to use comprehensive technological solutions with reduced capital expenditure and safe methods of data storage. This eases the inconveniences normally caused by the need to develop and own such comprehensive technological solutions.

This research looks at the potential of the emerging trend of “cloud computing paradigm” in enhancing quality provision and delivery of information services in university library and information centers in the context of limited financial budgets. Cloud computing has been gaining momentum in Kenya, especially in business organizations as compared to library and information establishments.

John Williams, senior director of marketing for Microsoft's .NET, was trying to build the .NET brand, a comprehensive family of next-generation connectivity software products. Highlights the challenges of branding and positioning a complex technology offering. The first challenge facing Microsoft was to develop a common definition of .NET, which had been in flux over the prior two years. The second challenge was to choose between an umbrella branding strategy, a sub-branding strategy, and an ingredient branding strategy. The third challenge was to create a value proposition that would appeal to three very different target audiences: business decision makers, IT professionals, and developers.

To analyze the branding and positioning of a complex new technology offering: by defining a new product offering for public understanding and comprehension; evaluating brand strategies for optimal effect, considering possible hurdles to implementation of each strategy; and developing a value proposition attractive to differing audiences.

A cyber world (CW) is a digitized world created on cyberspaces inside computers interconnected by networks including the Internet. Following ubiquitous computers, sensors, e‐tags, networks, information, services, etc., is a road towards a smart world (SW) created on both cyberspaces and real spaces. It is mainly characterized by ubiquitous intelligence or computational intelligence pervasion in the physical world filled with smart things. In recent years, many novel and imaginative researches have been conducted to try and experiment a variety of smart things including characteristic smart objects and specific smart spaces or environments as well as smart systems. The next research phase to emerge, we believe, is to coordinate these diverse smart objects and integrate these isolated smart spaces together into a higher level of spaces known as smart hyperspace or hyper‐environments, and eventually create the smart world. In this paper, we discuss the potential trends and related challenges toward the smart world and ubiquitous intelligence from smart things to smart spaces and then to smart hyperspaces. Likewise, we show our efforts in developing a smart hyperspace of ubiquitous care for kids, called UbicKids.

The purpose of this paper is to propose a model to map the on-premise computing system of the university with cloud computing for achieving an effective and reliable university e-governance (e-gov) system.

The proposed model incorporates the university’s internal e-gov system with cloud computing in order to achieve better reliability, accessibility and availability of e-gov services while keeping the recurring expenditure low. This model has been implemented (and tested on a university e-gov system) in the University of Kashmir (UOK); case study of this implementation has been chosen as the research methodology to discuss and demonstrate the proposed model.

According to the results based on practical implementation, the proposed model is ideal for e-governed systems as it provided adequate cost savings and high availability (HA) with operational ease, apart from continuing to have the necessary security in place to maintain confidential information such as student details, grades, etc.

The implication of this study is to achieve HA and to reduce the cost from using external clouds, mapping internal IT servers of the university with the external cloud computing services.

Because no established mapping model for universities has been provided for effective, low-cost, highly available university e-gov system, the proposed mapping model through this paper closes this gap and provides guidelines to implement a hybrid-mapped e-gov model for universities while keeping the recurring expenditure on cloud computing minimal. The paper provides the perceptions of its adoption at UOK for achieving high reliability, accessibility and uptime of its e-gov applications while keeping the recurring expenditure on cloud computing minimal.

Start‐up companies in particular can benefit from cloud computing services, since frequently they do not operate an internal IT infrastructure. The purpose of this paper is to present a total cost of ownership (TCO) approach for cloud computing services.

The authors applied a multi‐method approach (systematic literature review, analysis of real cloud computing services, expert interviews, case study) for the development and evaluation of a formal mathematical TCO model.

It was found that decision processes in cloud computing are conducted ad hoc and lack systematic methods. The presented method raises the awareness of indirect and hidden costs in cloud computing.

Some restrictive assumptions were made. For instance, cost types that focus on an existing internal IT infrastructure were hidden. Future research can combine risk and security aspects by means of a TCO approach. Additionally, benefits management in cloud computing is another new research field that can, for instance, be explored by means of cost‐benefit analyses.

The analysis of relevant cost types and factors of cloud computing services is an important pillar of decision making in cloud computing. The software tool allows for an easy application of the TCO model with reasonable effort.

The paper provides an evaluated mathematical model for the calculation of the TCO of cloud computing services. With this tool, decision makers are able to decide whether outsourcing into the cloud is monetarily attractive; to be more specific, whether the costs associated with cloud computing services are lower than with a pre‐existing infrastructure.

With the rise of alternate discovery services, such as Google Scholar, in conjunction with the increase in open access content, researchers have the option to bypass academic libraries when they search for and retrieve scholarly information. This state of affairs implies that academic libraries exist in competition with these alternate services and with the patrons who use them, and as a result, may be disintermediated from the scholarly information seeking and retrieval process. Drawing from decision and game theory, bounded rationality, information seeking theory, citation theory, and social computing theory, this study investigates how academic librarians are responding as competitors to changing scholarly information seeking and collecting practices. Bibliographic data was collected in 2010 from a systematic random sample of references on CiteULike.org and analyzed with three years of bibliometric data collected from Google Scholar. Findings suggest that although scholars may choose to bypass libraries when they seek scholarly information, academic libraries continue to provide a majority of scholarly documentation needs through open access and institutional repositories. Overall, the results indicate that academic librarians are playing the scholarly communication game competitively.

Grid computing, cloud computing (CC), utility computing and software as a service are emerging technologies predicted to result in massive consolidation as meta‐level computing services of everything beneath one umbrella in the future. The purpose of this study is to foster the understanding and differentiation, by using the three aforementioned types of computing technologies and software, as a service by both public and private libraries to meet their expectations and strategic objectives.

The approach in this study is a review based on comparing the four computing technologies with a brief analysis for researching and designing the mind map of a new meta‐level computing service approach, taking into consideration the need for new economic tariff and pricing models as well as service‐level agreements.

Since it is anticipated that there will be likely potential consolidation and integration of computing services, a study of these four most advanced computing technologies and their methodologies is presented through their definition, characteristics, functionalities, advantages and disadvantages. This is a well‐timed technological advancement for libraries.

It appears that the future of library services will become even more integrated, running over CC platforms based on usage rather than just storage of data.

Libraries will become an open useful resource to all and sundry in a global context, and that will have huge societal benefits never imagined before.

Concisely addresses the strategies, functional characteristics, advantages and disadvantages by comparing these technologies from several service aspects with a view to assisting in creating the next generation outer space computing.

Describes a system for using the World Wide Web to distribute computational tasks to multiple hosts on the Web. A programmer with a computation to distribute registers it with a Web server. An idle host uses this server to identify available computations and downloads a Java class to perform the computation ‐ we call this class a distriblet. The paper describes the programs written to carry out the load distribution, the structure of a distriblet class, and our experience in using this system.