[AISWorld] On Data Centers research: IJITSA CFP - deadline Aug.31.2017

[mmora at securenym.net]

Calls for Papers (special): International Journal of Information
Technologies and Systems Approach (IJITSA)

Special Issue On: Critical Management and Technical Issues of Data Center
Systems
Submission Due Date
8/31/2017

Indexed at:
ESCI Web of Science; SCOPUS; ACM Digital Library; DBLP; COMPENDEX; INSPEC

Introduction.

Data Centers are installations specifically built with the primary purpose
to house and provide the adequate environmental conditions (space, power,
cooling, and physical security) for the computer and telecommunication
equipment used in an organization (Snevely, 2002). However, by extension
Data Center Systems can be defined as the whole system rooted in a
physical Data Center installation that includes the human resource, the
service, the financial, the procurement and the operations sub-systems.

Data Centers (and Data Center Systems) have become a relevant
organizational asset for generating valuable information resources and
providing Information Technology and Communication (ICT) functionalities
to local and remote internal or external end users. Furthermore, in the
last decade, with the explosion of web-based and inter-organizational
systems for these type of end users, in large and medium-sized
organizations with international operations, the Data Centers Systems can
be considered as mission-critical assets whose availability, performance,
power efficiency, security, continuity, and overall effectiveness must be
guaranteed in order to avoid critical downtimes (Arregoces & Portolani,
2003; Bilal et al., 2013). Industry reports (Siemon, 2005; ENP, 2011)
indicate that 1-hr downtime costs in Data Centers installation varies from
US $10,000 to US $6,000,000 to organizations providing services such as:
ATM, cellular services, air line reservations, on-line shopping, package
shipping, credit card authorizations, and brokerage operations. Additional
to direct financial costs, organizations can also suffer negative impacts
from a data center’s downtime on: image by business disruption, end-user
productivity, IT productivity, and third-party operational delay (ENP,
2011). Thus, Data Centers installations are currently key organizational
assets, and their high value proposition in ensuring business continuity
operations has been highlighted.

However, the planning, design, implementation, operation and control,
maintenance, evolution, and disposal (when the useful data center’s life
has been reached) of data centers, in modern times represents a complex
intertwined net of processes (Holtsnider & Jaffe, 2012). The explosion of
ICT has introduced both critical technical engineering problems and
challenges for Data Centers managers (Greenberg et al., 2006; Daim et al.,
2009; Alaraifi et al., 2013; Covas et al., 2013). In turn, the economic,
and socio-political environmental international issues have also
introduced managerial challenges for Data Center managers regarding green
IT initiatives, IT service management initiatives, IT managerial cost
reduction, provision of effective valued IT services, timely release of IT
services, and assuring a high IT service availability and continuity
status (Conger et al., 2008; Galup et al., 2009). In particular, the
conceptualization of Data Centers as service systems (Mora et al., 2009;
Törhönen, 2014) and the link with the design of IT services (Mora et al.,
2015) as well as their final implementation in Data Centers is missing in
the literature.

Furthermore, traditionally the knowledge sources on data center processes
have come from the ICT industry. Thus there is a wide knowledge gap
between the academic and industry sectors on critical management and
technical issues on Data Centers at present. This is due to the explosion
of ICT, the high costs for having laboratories type Data Centers in the
academic environments, the lack of textbooks on Data Centers, and the
scarcity of undergraduate and graduate courses on these topics (Schaeffer,
1981; Gusev et al., 2014; Memari et al., 2014). Nevertheless, we consider
that knowledge with rigor and relevance must be produced from both
academia and industry. ICT academia has published research on IT service
management process frameworks, cloud computing performance models (Bilal
et al., 2014), and other related issues. On the other hand, ICT industry
has advanced with green IT metrics (Daim et al., 2009; Loos et al., 2011;
Wang and Khan, 2011), maturity models (Singh et al., 2011) and best
practices for software development such as DevOps (Kim et al., 2015; Stier
et al., 2015) where data center engineers are included for a fast and
correct software release (Pollard et al., 2010; Kliazovich et al., 2012).

Hence, updated, integrative, scientific and practical knowledge is
required to address critical managerial and technical issues on planning,
designing, implementing, operating and controlling, maintaining, evolving,
and disposal of Data Centers Systems.


Objective.

This special issue pursues to encourage in the Information System
community the interest and engagement in doing high quality research on
critical management and technical issues found, lived and expected to be
solved in thousands of Data Centers spread in worldwide (mainly in
well-developed economies).


Recommended Topics.

Topics to be addressed in this special issue include (but are not limited
to) the following ones:
Conceptual studies on:

    Fundamental concepts on Data Centers from deep literature review
    Classifications of Data Centers (business vs scientific; centralized
vs distributed, tiers I, II, III or IV; private vs cloud vs ISP)
    Data Centers Architectures
    Organizational Designs for Data Centers Systems
    Data Centers as Service Systems
    Taxonomies of Services delivered by Data Centers Systems
    Value of Data Centers Systems
    Methodologies for Designing Data Center Systems
    Methodologies for Designing IT Services in Data Centers Systems
    Literature review on ICT Tools for Data Centers Systems
    Risk Management in Data Centers Systems
    Data Centers Metrics
    Data Centers Maturity Models
    Data Centers Standards (TIA 942, Uptime Institute Framework, IEEE 493,
ISO/IEC 27000, NIST standards, among others)
    Simulation Models on Data Centers Systems



Empirical Studies on:

    Implementation of Best Data Centers Practices (ITSM frameworks,
standards)
    Critical Success Factors for Implementing Data Centers
    Economic Benefits of Data Centers
    Impacts of ICT Tools for Managing Data Centers
    Risks Factors found in Data Centers Systems
    Impacts of Data Centers Disaster Recovery Plans
    Quality of IT Services in Data Centers
    Emergent Practices in Data Centers Systems (Green ICT, DevOps, Cloud,
Business Analytics tools, among others)



Submission Procedure.

Researchers and practitioners are invited to submit papers for this
special theme issue on Critical Management and Technical Issues on Data
Centers Systems on or before August 31th, 2017. Prospective authors should
note that only original and previously unpublished articles will be
considered. INTERESTED AUTHORS MUST CONSULT THE JOURNAL’S GUIDELINES FOR
MANUSCRIPT SUBMISSIONS at
http://www.igi-global.com/journals/guidelines-for-submission.aspx PRIOR TO
SUBMISSION. All article submissions will be forwarded to at least 3
members of the Editorial Review Board of the journal for double-blind,
peer review. Final decision regarding acceptance/revision/rejection will
be based on the reviews received from the reviewers. All submissions must
be forwarded electronically at:
http://www.igi-global.com/authorseditors/titlesubmission/newproject.aspx

Guest Editors.

Dr. Jorge Marx Gómez, Carl von Ossietzky Universität Oldenburg, Germany
Dr. Manuel Mora, Autonomous University of Aguascalientes, Mexico
Dr. Rory O’Connor, Dublin City University, Ireland

International Journal of Information Technologies and Systems Approach
(IJITSA)

IJITSA website:
http://www.igi-global.com/journal/international-journal-information-technologies-systems/1098

Submission link:
http://www.igi-global.com/submission/submit-manuscript/?jid=1098&cfcid=00610cfa-a194-4e85-9aea-fbe9e75b60d2