Complex IT Service Research Articles

Strategic sourcing decisions: A Swiss bank responding to the dynamics of the core banking system market

This case examines strategic challenges encountered by Berner Kantonalbank (BEKB), a prominent regional Swiss bank. The bank adapts its sourcing decisions related to its core banking system amidst the evolving landscape of the core banking software market. The narrative unfolds against unfulfilled strategic goals in a changing IT industry, revealing the complexities and decisions that shape BEKB’s approach to core banking system sourcing. In 2010, BEKB outsourced its core banking solution to Hewlett Packard (HP). This encompassed the transfer of all employees of its former subsidiary, RTC. RTC had formerly developed and operated BEKB’s core banking solution. The strategic move to outsource aimed to leverage HP’s capabilities for cost-effective core banking system operations. BEKB anticipated enhanced core banking system capabilities at a reduced cost, while HP sought to establish itself in the core banking software market. However, instead of expanding BEKB’s core banking system customer base, clients increasingly migrated to other providers. The evolving circumstances placed BEKB and HP in a mutual dependency, reaching a critical juncture when the bank decided to terminate the contract, which yielded a spectrum of strategic options. The decision taken endured for a few years. Subsequently, another strategic reevaluation was necessary. This case delves into the intricate interplay between sourcing decision and IT software product dynamics, offering perspectives from client and vendor. It sheds fresh light on strategic sourcing decision-making within the evolving landscape of an increasingly complex IT services environment.

The role of automated information systems in increasing the effi ciency of agricultural business

The article provides definitions of the basic and frequently used concepts in the fi eld of automation of functions and management tasks in the agroindustrial complex. The results of a quantitative analysis of implemented projects for the implementation of IT systems, software products and complex IT services at agricultural enterprises in Russia are presented. The groups(by types of technologies and classes of systems) of the most common IT systems used in the management of agricultural enterprises on the territory of the Russian Federation have been identified. Possible prospects and benefits from the introduction of technologies and specialized information management systems are discussed as modern most important tools for increasing the effi ciency of activities and the existing management system at the enterprises of the agro-industrial complex of the Republic of Belarus.

A Case for a New IT Ecosystem: On-The-Fly Computing

The complexity of development and deployment in today’s IT world is enormous. Despite the existence of so many pre-fabricated components, frameworks, cloud providers, etc., building IT systems still remains a major challenge and most likely overtaxes even a single ambitious developer. This results in spreading such development and deployment tasks over different team members with their own specialization. Nevertheless, not even highly competent IT personnel can easily succeed in developing and deploying a nontrivial application that comprises a multitude of different components running on different platforms (from frontend to backend). Current industry trends such as DevOps strive to keep development and deployment tasks tightly integrated. This, however, only partially addresses the underlying complexity of either of these two tasks. But would it not be desirable to simplify these tasks in the first place, enabling one person – maybe even a non-expert – to deal with all of them? Today’s approaches to the development and deployment of complex IT applications are not up to this challenge. “On-The-Fly Computing” offers an approach to tackle this challenge by providing complex IT services through largely automated configuration and execution. The configuration of such services is based on simple, flexibly combinable services that are provided by different software providers and traded in a market. This constitutes a highly relevant challenge for research in many branches of computer science, information systems, business administration, and economics. In this research note, it is analyzed which pieces of this new “On-The-Fly Computing” ecosystem already exist and where additional, often significant research efforts are necessary.

Business-driven service placement for highly dynamic and distributed cloud systems

The emergence of large-scale Cloud computing environments characterized by dynamic resource pricing schemes enables valuable cost saving opportunities for service providers that could dynamically decide to change the placement of their IT service components in order to reduce their bills. However, that requires new management solutions to dynamically reconfigure IT service components placement, in order to respond to pricing changes and to control and guarantee the high-level business objectives defined by service providers. This paper proposes a novel approach based on Genetic Algorithm (GA) optimization techniques for adaptive business-driven IT service component reconfiguration. Our proposal allows to evaluate the performance of complex IT services deployments over large-scale Cloud systems in a wide range of alternative configurations, by granting prompt transitions to more convenient placements as business values and costs change dynamically. We deeply assessed our framework in a realistic scenario that consists of 2-tier service architectures with real-world pricing schemes. Collected results show the effectiveness and quantify the overhead of our solution. The results also demonstrate the suitability of business-driven IT management techniques for service components placement and reconfiguration in highly dynamic and distributed Cloud systems.

Network Virtualization for QoS-Aware Resource Management in Cloud Data Centers: A Survey

The increasing popularity of Cloud Computing is leading to the emergence of large virtualized data centers hosting increasingly complex and dynamic IT systems and services. Over the past decade, the efficient sharing of computational resources through virtualization has been subject to intensive research, while network management in cloud data centers has received less attention. A variety of network-intensive applications require QoS (Quality-of-Service) provisioning, performance isolation and support for flexible and efficient migration of virtual machines. In this paper, we survey existing network virtualization approaches and evaluate the extent to which they can be used as a basis for realizing the mentioned requirements in a cloud data center. More specifically, we identify generic network virtualization techniques, characterize them according to their features related to QoS management and performance isolation, and show how they can be composed together and used as building blocks for complex network virtualization solutions. We then present an overview of selected representative cloud platforms and show how they leverage the generic techniques as a basis for network resource management. Finally, we outline open issues and research challenges in the area of performance modeling and proactive resource management of virtualized data center infrastructures.

Dynamics of value co-creation in complex IT service engagements

The hallmark of service--value co-creation--is not easy to achieve in B2B IT service engagements. Typically, client and provider are both complicated organizational entities with multiple agendas and diverse stakeholders, and engagements often extend over years. We analyzed a number of IT service engagements to better understand their complex dynamics, with the ultimate goal of improving their outcomes. This paper reports on our study of how value co-creation unfolds over time, and identifies basic dynamics central to the modeling of service systems--actualization of service and realization of value--that are reflected in the proposed framework.

Identifying trouble patterns in complex IT services engagements

What causes complex information technology services engagements to fail? The root cause for the failure may derive from several sources, including unclear requirements, poor project management practices, underestimation of technical complexity, not accounting for the overhead in using global labor arbitrage, and rapid scope or schedule changes. In this paper, we explore how quantifiable measures of project progress gathered at several important stages of the life cycle of a project can aid in early identification of troubled projects. Specifically, we define derived statistical measures that can be used to predict the eventual outcome of a project. These predictions are used to initiate accelerated risk mitigation plans. In addition to the discussion surrounding the prediction models, we also discuss the importance of the packaging and presentation of the statistical data that result in the successful use of our system. Our work has been adopted and used in a project health management system that is deployed worldwide by IBM Global Business Services.

Bidding for Complex Projects: Evidence from the Acquisitions of IT Services

Competitive bidding (as auctions) is commonly used to procure goods and services. Public buyers are often mandated by law to adopt competitive procedures to ensure transparency and promote full competition. Recent theoretical literature, however, suggests that open competition can perform poorly in allocating complex projects. In exploring the determinants of suppliers’ bidding behavior in procurement auctions for complex IT services, we find results that are consistent with theory. We find that price and quality do not exhibit the classical tradeoff one would expect: quite surprisingly, high quality is associated to low prices. Furthermore, while quality is mainly driven by suppliers’ experience, price is affected more by the scoring rule and by the level of expected competition. These results might suggest that (scoring) auctions fail to appropriately incorporate buyers’ complex price/quality preferences in the tender design.