Open Systems. DBMS 2020, Volume 28, Number 2

COVER FEATURE

HYPERAUTOMATION PLATFORMS

Automation is a 10-Step Competitive Necessity
The automation arms race has already begun. New business models and countless business processes will be automated to save money and make money—the perfect twin metrics. Lagging here will force an expensive catch-up strategy, where nothing good ever happens.
Stephen J. Andriole (stephen.andriole@villanova.edu), professor, Villanova School of Business.

Manufacturing Management: A System and A Platform
While the notions of digital platform and digital transformation are discussed widely these days, it is not always clear what is their relation to specific objectives of a manufacturer. Zyfra Industrial Automation Kit is a manufacturing management solution that translates the general benefits of digitalization into a decision support tool aimed for achieving specific industrial goals.
Vasily Fadeyev (vasiliy.fadeev@zyfra.com), director for products; Sergei Kukushkin, (sergey.kukushkin@zyfra.com); product manager, Ivan Druzin (ivan.druzin@zyfra.com), senior product manager, Zyfra Group (Moscow).

Business Domain Driven Data Management
Restrictive measures introduced against entire nations can have potential negative impact on many economy sectors, but they also can become a driving force for implementing novel approaches. This is what happens today in the hydrocarbon extraction industry, where unified digital platforms are used to enable process hyperautomation.
Sergei Kosenkov (kosenkov@nposngs.ru), IT project manager; Vladimir Turchaninov (turchaninov@nposngs.ru), deputy CEO for systems integration; Yuri Chetyrin (chetyrin@nposngs.ru), development team leader, Soyuzneftegazservis (Moscow).

MODERN ARCHITECTURE
Aldebaran, a New Star on GPGPU
Sky Once mere graphic accelerators, these days GPUs have turned into all-in-one systems for General Purpose Computing on Graphic Processing Unit (GPGPU) used in datacenters and powerful exascale supercomputers operating in on-board, mobile, and stationary configurations. This process was initiated by Nvidia over 10 years ago, and currently, almost all leading technology industry players are doing something in this area. Mikhail Kuzminsky (kus@free.net), senior fellow, N.D. Zelinsky Institute of Organic Chemistry (Moscow).

INTEGRATION
Open Banking: What It Is, Where It’s at, and Where It’s
Going Open banking is a special kind of financial ecosystem governed by certain security profiles, application interfaces, and guidelines with the objective of improving customer choices and experiences. OB also makes it easier for new entries into the financial business sector.
Mohamad Kassab (muk36@psu.edu), professor; Phillip A. Laplante (plaplante@psu.edu), professor, Pennsylvania State University.

SECURITY
Multilayered Diagnostics for Smart Cities
The fields of health care, education, culture, and shopping can all be integrated into the core of a smart city to create an infrastructure that allows people to live more conveniently. We must think ahead about cybersecurity, as cyberattacks can threaten the lives of citizens.
Jungheum Park (jungheumpark@korea.ac.kr), assistant professor; Hyunji Chung (localchung@gmail.com),
research professor, Korea University; Joanna F. DeFranco (jfd104@psu.edu), professor, Pennsylvania State University.

OPEN SOURCE
Commercial Participation in OpenStack: Two Sides of a Coin
The article provides a landscape of commercial participation in OpenStack, a large-scale open source software (OSS) ecosystem. We discuss how to achieve a balance between maximizing business profit and ensuring the long-term sustainability of OSS ecosystems.
Yuxia Zhang (yuxiazh@bit.edu.cn), assistant professor, Beijing Institute of Technology; Hao He (heh@pku.edu.cn), Ph.D. candidate; Minghui Zhou (zhmh@pku.edu.cn), professor, Peking University.

Open Source in the 3rd Millenium: April Theses
The St. Petersburg International Economic Forum 2021 included an entire session focused on open source, presided by Russia’s Ministry of Digital Development, Communications and Mass Media. Thus, the government has noted open source, and the IT industry may be on the verge of changes. What has happened in the world of open source since the romantic times of Richard Stallman and Eric S. Raymond? Is the classic approach to open source still applicable today?
Ivan Panchenko (i.panchenko@postgrespro.ru), deputy CEO, Postgres Professional (Moscow).

OPINION
Robot Hacking Games
Hacker “Capture the Flag” has been a mainstay at hacker gatherings since the mid-1990s. It’s like the outdoor game, but played on computer networks. Teams of hackers defend their own computers while attacking other teams’. It’s a controlled setting for what computer hackers do in real life: finding and fixing vulnerabilities in their own systems and exploiting them in others’. In 2016, DARPA ran a similarly styled event for artificial intelligence.
Bruce Schneier (schneier@schneier.com), chief of security architecture, Inrupt, Inc.

OS MEETING ROOM
Battling Disasters with Information
The damage inflicted by natural disasters is often caused partly by the fact that the managers lack information, which leads either to inactivity or to the possible consequences being realized too late, so there is no time to prevent anything. Could the losses caused by natural disasters be prevented by minimizing or eliminating the potential harm?
Irina Sheyan (rrisha@osp.ru), staff writer, Open Systems.DBMS Journal (Moscow).

OS MUSEUM
Politics And the First Soviet Computers
The first computers in the USSR, M-1 and MESM, saw the light of day in December 1951: the Soviet Union became the third country of the world to enter the computer era. The M-1 blueprint was ready as far back as in 1948, and in three years, the fully operational computer emerged, although this might not have happened.
Sergei Prokhorov (sergei.prokhorov@gmail.com), chief researcher, S. I. Vavilov Institute for the History of Science and Technology of the Russian Academy of Sciences; Dmitry Volkov (vlk@keldysh.ru), senior fellow, M. V. Keldysh Institute of Applied Mathematics (Moscow).

OS ACADEMY
Artificial Intelligence for All
The March, April, and May Issues of Computer Magazine (IEEE Computer Society, Vol. 55, No. 3, 4, 5, 2022) cover the subjects of software engineering techniques’ readiness for AI, integration of algorithms into everyday life, and next-generation gaming technologies.
Alexander Tyrenko (shoorah@osp.ru), independent writer (Moscow).