-------- Weitergeleitete Nachricht -------- Betreff: [wkwi] CFP on Critical Management and Technical Issues of Data Center Systems, InternationalJournal of Information Technologies and Systems Approach (IJITSA), Extended Datum: Sat, 16 Sep 2017 16:11:47 +0200 (CEST) Von: jorge.marx.gomez@uni-oldenburg.de Antwort an: postmaster@seda.wiai.uni-bamberg.de

*------------------------------------------------------------------------ Calls for Papers: International Journal of Information Technologies and Systems Approach (IJITSA) ------------------------------------------------------------------------ * *Special Issue On: Critical Management and Technical Issues of Data Center Systems*

*Submission Due Date September 30, 2017*

Website: https://www.igi-global.com/calls-for-papers-special/international-journal-in...

*/_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 in relevant organizational assets 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 September 30th, 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.aspxPRIOR 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 through the eEditorial Discovery

All submissions and inquiries should be directed to the attention of:

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

International Journal of Information Technologies and Systems Approach (IJITSA)

Emails: jorge.marx.gomez@uni-oldenburg.de; dr.manuel.mora.uaa@gmail.com; rory.oconnor@dcu.ie

------------ Univ.-Prof. Dr.-Ing. habil. Jorge Marx Gómez University of Oldenburg Department of Computing Science Chair Business Informatics (Very Large Business Applications) Ammerländer Heerstr. 114-118; 26129 Oldenburg - GERMANY Tel. +49 441/ 798-4470,  Fax -4472 E-Mail: jorge.marx.gomez@uni-oldenburg.de