A utility-centered approach to building dependable infrastructure services

ABSTRACT

Achieving dependability in large scale infrastructure systems always requires making intelligent tradeoffs. This paper draws upon ideas from economics and operations research to propose a systematic approach to thinking about such tradeoffs in terms of the system beneficiary's utility. The design process consists of choosing a spanning set of axes for the design space, explicitly formulating utility functions with respect to each axis of the spanning set, and then iteratively converging on the design that maximizes overall utility. We apply this process to the design of a fictitious online banking system.

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