Service provider

About: Service provider is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 55107 publications have been published within this topic receiving 894381 citations. The topic is also known as: external service provider & internal service provider.

Customer Reactions to Service Separation

Abstract: Recent research suggests that inseparability is not a universal distinguishing characteristic of services and that the consumption of many services is or can be separated from their production. This research defines service separation as customers' absence from service production, which denotes the spatial separation between service production and consumption. In a series of qualitative and quantitative studies across different services, the authors examine customer reactions to service separation. The results indicate that service separation increases customers' perceptions of not only access convenience and benefit convenience but also performance risk and psychological risk. Furthermore, these effects differ across services. Specifically, relative to experience services, for credence services, the effects of separation on service convenience are mitigated, and the effects on perceived risk are magnified. Subsequently, the convenience and risk perceptions induced by service separation can influ...

Macro-femto heterogeneous network deployment and management: from business models to technical solutions

Abstract: The femtocell technique can address the poor in-building coverage problem and increase net work capacity cost efficiently. At present, some wireless service providers have launched their femtocell services, although there are still plenty of challenges unsettled. In this article we discuss the business mode in macro-femto heterogeneous networks. We propose three frameworks according to the deployment types of femtocells, which are joint deployment, WSP deployment, and user deployment frameworks. Their unique characteristics, corresponding challenges, and potential solutions are further investigated to provide deeper insight systematically. We also present two schemes for WSP revenue maximization under the WSP deployment framework. The first scheme jointly handles the interference and users' demand satisfaction via cross-tier channel allocation, and the second scheme further considers the optimal pricing selection for accessing different networks.

Modeling and assessing inference exposure in encrypted databases

Abstract: The scope and character of today's computing environments are progressively shifting from traditional, one-on-one client-server interaction to the new cooperative paradigm. It then becomes of primary importance to provide means of protecting the secrecy of the information, while guaranteeing its availability to legitimate clients. Operating online querying services securely on open networks is very difficult; therefore many enterprises outsource their data center operations to external application service providers. A promising direction toward prevention of unauthorized access to outsourced data is represented by encryption. However, data encryption is often supported for the sole purpose of protecting the data in storage while allowing access to plaintext values by the server, which decrypts data for query execution. In this paper, we present a simple yet robust single-server solution for remote querying of encrypted databases on external servers. Our approach is based on the use of indexing information attached to the encrypted database, which can be used by the server to select the data to be returned in response to a query without the need of accessing the plaintext database content. Our indexes balance the trade-off between efficiency requirements in query execution and protection requirements due to possible inference attacks exploiting indexing information. We investigate quantitative measures to model inference exposure and provide some related experimental results.

Listening to local voices: adapting rapid appraisal to assess health and social needs in general practice.

Abstract: Objectives: To explore the use of rapid appraisal in defining the health and social needs of a community and to formulate joint action plans between the residents and service providers. Design: Collection of data by an extended primary care team from three sources: existing documents about the neighbourhood, interviews with a range of informants, and direct observations to build a profile of the community. Setting: Council estate of 670 homes in Edinburgh. Main outcome measures - Perceived problems of the community and suggestions for change. Results: The interviews and focus groups identified six priorities for change, many of which were not health related. These changes have been or are being implemented. Conclusions: An expanded primary care team can use rapid appraisal as a first step in identifying and meeting local health needs. It facilitates a multi-disciplinary approach and complements quantitative methods of assessing need.