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Utility computing provides a pay-as-you-go approach to information systems in which application providers (e.g., web sites) can better manage their costs by adding capacity in response to increased demands and shedding capacity when it is no longer needed. This paper addresses application providers who use clusters of servers. Our work develops a framework to determine the number of servers that minimizes the sum of quality-of-service (QoS) costs resulting from service level penalties and server holding costs for the server cluster. The server characteristics considered are service rate, failure rates, repair rates, and costs. The contributions of this paper are: 1) a model for the performance and availability of an e-Commerce system that is consistent with data from a multisystem testbed with an e-Commerce workload; 2) a business-oriented cost model for resource allocation for application providers; 3) a closed form approximation for the optimal allocation of servers for an application provider based on the performance model in 1) and the cost model in 2); and 4) a simple criteria for utility owners and server manufacturers to make tradeoffs between server characteristics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on retail inventory control. An approach to developing inventory reordering policies for potential application at a Western Canadian retailer of automobile parts and accessories, housewares, hardware, and sporting goods, has been discussed. The retail environment required a model that combined lost sales with a service level constraint. Low and infrequent demand for most products did not appear to be well modeled by a standard probability distribution. Efficient exact calculations of expected costs and service levels required bounds and recursions. The large number of product-store combinations required efficient optimization methods. These issues arise but are not all explicitly addressed in most retail inventory systems and reported research. Further most reported applications of inventory theory concern in-process and spare parts inventories. This research was carried out for management of Canadian Tire Pacific Associates which operates 21 retail stores in Vancouver and its suburbs in British Columbia, Canada.

Examines applications of flexible pricing in electronic commerce. Discussion on flexible pricing and the supply chain; Negotiation mechanisms for procurement; Applications of flexible pricing on the sell side.

In this paper we present a technical framework that supports sense and respond (SaR), the approach that enables an enterprise to adapt to a rapidly changing business environment. To implement the SaR approach, an enterprise proactively monitors trends and uses effective decision-support tools to help it act in a timely manner. We describe two pilot projects in which we implemented SaR prototypes and applied them to solve business problems. In the first pilot project we helped the IBM Microelectronics Division deploy an automated inventory management system based on our inventory optimization model. In the second pilot project, we helped the IBM Personal Computing Division deploy a SaR system in support of demand/supply conditioning. One of the components of this SaR system is an order trend model that provides early warning of constraints and excesses in the supply chain and helps make demand/supply conditioning more effective. Early results from these projects are encouraging and show that significant gains in profitability are possible. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: We examined the safety of the routine use of epidural anesthesia by an experienced anesthetic team in a select group of obstetric and gynecologic patients., Methods: All anesthetic records and an obstetric department database from 1993 to 2006 were retrospectively reviewed (n = 35,628 cases). Success rate, major complication rates, and mortality rates were the major end-points of the study., Results: We performed 34,109 epidural blocks in obstetric and gynecologic anesthesia. The epidural rate increased from 57% to 96% over a 14-yr period. Permanent neurological sequel, cardiac arrest, or mortality and maternal mortality were not seen during this period., Conclusions: Epidural anesthesia/analgesia, as performed in a private hospital in Turkey by five experienced anesthesiologists for a select group of patients, was a reliable and safe procedure.