Global Service Providers Research Articles

Analysis of Sustainable Smart Cities in India: Demographical and Financial aspect

India is poised to become the world’s most populous country by 2030, presenting an unprecedented market for global manufacturers and service providers. This demographic shift is also spurring rapid urbanization, with a growing population migrating to top-tier cities and emerging megacities expected to drive 80% of the nation’s economic growth. These urban centers have significant potential to implement advanced technologies and infrastructure, optimizing scarce resources for sustainable development. The Government of India’s Smart City Mission is a pioneering initiative aimed at fostering economic growth and enhancing quality of life by advancing local development through smart technologies. The mission seeks to create cities that provide essential infrastructure, a high standard of living, and a clean, sustainable environment. The approach centers on market-driven strategies to meet both supply and demand, aiming to raise awareness and optimize resources across sectors—residential, industrial, transportation, commercial, and recreational. This study explores the demographic and financial dimensions of sustainable smart cities and their contributions to economic development and societal well-being.

Innovators and Transformers Revisiting the gap between academia and practice: insights from the green logistics phenomenon

PurposeLogistics and supply chain management (L&SCM) scholars and practitioners have devoted extensive efforts to advancing green logistics practices (GLPs), yet the intersection between the two domains in relation to the topic remains underexplored. To accelerate GLPs’ development amid the escalating climate crisis, this research examines this intersection by comparing the responsiveness of academia and practice to the call for green logistics over time.Design/methodology/approachTo compare between academia and practice, we combined a systematic literature review on the development of GLPs in L&SCM journals (N = 122) with a content analysis of annual and sustainability reports published by the four major global logistics service providers (LSPs: DHL, DB Schenker, UPS and FedEx; N = 156) over the past three decades.FindingsThis research reveals that all the GLPs covered in the L&SCM literature have already been applied and reported by practitioners, both consistently and over a significant period of time. Academic progress, in turn, is delayed by slow-paced empirical methods, elevated research quality standards, prolonged funding and recruitment processes, and extended peer-review intervals. Further, a tendency toward reactive knowledge creation rather than proactive knowledge transfer is evident, obscuring the role of L&SCM scholars in steering the industry’s green advancement.Practical implicationsRecommendations are offered to L&SCM authors, editors, reviewers and university departments to advance pracademic endeavors in green logistics research and increase its responsiveness to global events.Originality/valueThis is one of the first studies to scrutinize the intersection between academia and practice on the evolution of GLPs. The revealed gaps prompted us to suggest a transformative paradigm for academia-practice collaborations targeting the L&SCM discipline at large, combining a bold proactive research stream aimed at knowledge transfer with a more traditional reactive stream aimed at knowledge creation.

Supplier selection for global service providers: a decision support system

In this paper, we develop a decision support system (DSS) aimed at solving a real-world supplier selection problem (SSP) for a global service provider (GSP) operating in the facility management (FM) industry. The GSP provides its customers with FM services, which are subcontracted to external suppliers selected on the basis of multiple criteria, like economic soundness, quality of service, capacity, and closeness. The SSP is formulated as a multi-objective generalized assignment problem, where the quality and the closeness of the selected suppliers are maximized, whereas a penalty produced by overcapacity assignments is minimized. The quality of each supplier is computed by applying a weighted sum method, resulting from a multi-criteria decision analysis in which the criteria weights are determined through an Analytic Hierarchy Process. The DSS is developed using a modular architecture with a relational database, a supplier evaluator, and a simulator, as well as an additional user-friendly interface. The simulator relies on a rolling horizon algorithm and three alternative configurations to assign contracts to suppliers. The effectiveness of the DSS is assessed by means of extensive computational experiments on historical data. The results show a significant average improvement of 25% compared to the solution adopted by the company.

Emancipation from the burdens of scholarly publishing – the diamond alternative of the JYU Studies

Scholarly publishing is determined and guided by the questionable and artificial prestige of publication channels that are also falsely used for assessing the research and the researchers. This steers researchers to publish their papers in the same publication channels as others do, and many relevant channels are seen as less valuable.While publishing is focused on certain journals and publishers, open access publishing is increasingly concentrated on fee-based channels, where authors are obligated to pay publishing fees (article processing charges, APC and book processing charges, BPC) just to get their research published in open access. This places a burden for researchers to get funding for publishing; it creates inequality between the researchers with funding and those without it, and it increases the costs for universities and other research organizations. (See e.g., Klebel & Ross-Hellauer 2023.) At the same time the academic community has gone further from the very principles of open science, such as the attempts to control the increasing costs of scientific publications and the aims to improve the equality of researchers and other people in need of science. Diamond OA as a realistic alternativeOpen scholarly publishing should be funded in another way than by charging publication fees from individual authors or their institutions.Promoting Diamond OA should be seen as part of a larger change in the services and practices of scholarly publishing. The whole global academic community and research service providers should be engaged in this change. The current OA diamond landscape needs to be built as a community that will support diversity and include a wide range of different academic communities in different languages (see Becerril et. al., 2021).Research communities such as learned societies and research organizations could take more control of scholarly publishing. While universities are now advancing responsible research assessment (see CoARA), maybe it's time to also reconsider the more active andresponsible role of the universities in reforming the scholarly publishing sector.Case JYU Studies - open monographs with agile servicesJYU Studies is a fresh peer-reviewed monograph series for research affiliated with the University of Jyväskylä. We found a demand for an alternative publishing channel for peer- reviewed monographs with the Diamond OA model. The Open Science Centre of the University and the editorial board manage the series and the publishing process. The editorial work and publishing are funded by the Open Science Centre. Close and agile cooperation with the departments of the University and the authors is key to all successful publishing processes.• The peer-review process is implemented openly, so the authors and the reviewers are aware of each other’s identities.• We offer alternatives for publishing formats (such as Omeka S and EPUB) and develop publishing services in an agile way.• Our publishing services cooperate closely with our university researchers and listen to their thoughts and ambitions for publishing.• The publishing services include communication and marketing planning in cooperation with the authors striving to reach the best possible visibility for the publication.• We also offer the authors a reporting service showing the usage and visibility of publications (e.g., downloads, citations). This way, the publishing service continues after the publication, and the authors get interesting information about the visibility and impact of their publication.All monographs in JYU Studies are deposited in the University of Jyväskylä repository, JYX, which is an essential infrastructure for research and education at the university. Publishing in an open repository with high-quality metadata and registered DOI identifiers ensures that monographs are indexed in relevant databases.

Intrusion Detection using hybridized Meta-heuristic techniques with Weighted XGBoost Classifier

Due to the widespread global internet services, service providers and users face a primary problem defending their systems, specifically from a new category of attacks and breaches. Network Intrusion Detection system (NIDS) assesses the network packets and reports low-security violations to respective system administrators. In the case of large imbalance datasets with more non-relevant features, the accuracy in classifying ad predicting precise intrusions needs to be improved. Moreover, most state-of-art intrusion-detection models based on machine learning may face high false-positive rates, imbalanced data with low training performance, low accuracy in detection, and complexity in optimization of feature selection aiding classification for impersonation attacks. Hence to overcome those complications, the present study deliberates an efficient IDS Modified Wrapper-based Whale Sine–cosine algorithm (MWWSCA) with Weighted Extreme Gradient Boosting (XgBoost) Classifier. The proposed model hybridizes the modified wrapper Whale Optimization approach and Sine–Cosine algorithm feature selection method to pick out the most discriminative, associated, and approximate best optimal features, enhancing the quality of prediction, not to fall on towards optimal local solution. Moreover, it balances out the exploitation and exploration phase of the model. However, the algorithm’s performance may decline on classifying the multi-attack and binary attacks accurately and may be prone to an imbalance in classes; thus, a Weighted XGBoost classifier with regularization of the loss function is implemented in binary and multi-classification. It utilizes the best optimal features, assign high weights to weak minor class features, and handles class imbalance issues. Overfitting of the model is tackled through regularization in the loss function during the stage of feature classification. The experimental outcomes and comparative assessment, in multi-class and binary attack classification from UNSW-NB15 and CICIDS datasets, explicated outperforming results with high accuracy, Precision, Recall, and F1-Score metrics.

CONSEQUENCES OF COVID-19 PANDEMIC ON TELECOM INDUSTRY

Marketing is an important process in meeting out the needs of a target market by exploring, creating and delivering the values of products or services. Marketing of services is a specialized branch because it takes care of three more P’s of marketing mix viz. People, Process & Physical Evidence in addition to traditional 4 P’s (Product, Pricing, Place & Promotion). Telecom sector plays a vital role among consumer as it provides various services like wireless mobile services, internet / data connectivity (fiber technology or broadband) & telephone connectivity for voice communication. etc These are essential services for all sector now a days be it education, commercial, administration, health & medical etc. People want to stay connected with the whole world. As the services have some unique properties (in comparison to products) like Intangibility, Ownership, Inseparability & perishability etc, marketing of telecommunication sector services are slightly different. Due to pandemic (COVID-19) people has witnessed lockdown, e-learning, work from home (WFH), online education etc. Global telecom service providers played a significant and vital role in overcoming the various problems raised due to COVID 19 pandemic. And because of these the demand of internet / data services increased by a significant level. The expectations from telecom service providers got increased as people are spending more time on internet and consuming more data on various social media platforms. Now subscribers want uninterrupted services round the clock and immediate super quick restoration of servicers, if any outage occurs. In this paper an attempt was made to present the consequences of COVID-19 in marketing of services especially the telecom sector. For this, important data were collected from websites, journals, reports & consumers through questionnaires. All the data were studied critically to reach the conclusion. KEYWORDS: COVID-19, Marketing of Services, Telecom Sector, Internet/Data Services

Robust Anomaly Clue Localization of Multi-Dimensional Derived Measure for Online Video Services

Anomaly clue localization of multi-dimensional derived measure is vitally important for the reliability of online video services. In this paper, we propose RobustSpot, an end-to-end framework for localizing the clues to anomalous multi-dimensional derived measures. RobustSpot integrates two novel indicators, i.e., “Anomaly Degree” and “Contribution Ability”, with a simple yet effective method, weighted association rule mining (WARM), to automatically mine the hidden relationships across data dimensions for localizing the most likely clues to the root cause. Using 135 real-world cases collected from a top-tier global online video service provider <inline-formula><tex-math notation="LaTeX">$H$</tex-math></inline-formula> with 170+ million monthly active users, we demonstrate that RobustSpot achieves high accuracy (Top-5 accuracy of 98%), significantly outperforming state-of-the-art methods. The average localization time of RobustSpot is 1.83s, which is satisfying in our scenario. We have open-sourced the implementation of RobustSpot as well as the data used in the evaluation experiments.

Arihant Global – The Journey From Local Papad Seller to a Global Service Provider

Arihant Global – The Journey From Local Papad Seller to a Global Service Provider

The Impact of Underdog Positioning on Consumer Preference in Korea: Focusing on Local Service Providers

Purpose - Small independent brands from local companies often use underdog positioning to compete with established global brands. However, whether the effectiveness of underdog positioning of local businesses in the service sector remains insufficient. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the underdog effect on the preference of Korean consumers for individual service providers positioned as underdogs.&#x0D; Design/methodology - The author examines the research question of this study using a one-way ANOVA in three different positioning (underdog vs. top dog vs. control) between-subjects design, with a group of Korean participants.&#x0D; Findings - The experimental study shows that support for independent local (vs. global) service providers positioned as underdogs is straightforward. Using the lens of consumer identification with underdog biographies, this study found that consumers prefer small local service providers with passion and determination regardless of their disadvantages.&#x0D; Originality/value - To the best of the author’s knowledge, this is the first study to examine the effectiveness of underdog positioning in the context of individual service providers. As it competes with global service companies for domestic consumer preference in Korea, the findings have great implications for ensuring the sustainability of small local service providers.

When servitized manufacturers globalise: becoming a provider of global services

PurposeTo increase the global competitiveness of their service business, servitized manufacturers transition towards global services. Yet, the literature has not addressed this development. This study is one of the first to investigate how servitized manufacturers can manage the globalisation of their service business.Design/methodology/approachThe study explores two cases of servitized manufacturers that transitioned from a local organisation of multi-domestic international services to a global-service organisation. The data were collected via semi-structured interviews, observations, and secondary sources.FindingsThe authors identify four elements of global service provision: operating model, global performance management, relationship governance, and staffing and employee development. The authors discuss each element and the connections between them, which the authors summarise in a proposed framework for global service provision.Originality/valueThe contributions of this research relate to the proposed framework of global service provision, which extends current conceptualisation of globalisation of routine services. The authors show the unique elements of global service provision of servitized manufacturers and discuss the theoretical and practical implications of the work.

THE HIDDEN POWERS OF VULNERABILITY AND HUMILITY

AbstractThe author adapts lessons from her new book Leadership Lessons with The Beatles, drawing on what she’s learned from that iconic band, and how it can be applied by organizations and individual leaders. She writes from the perspective of an engineer who became a global software leader. The two Beatles song titles she writes about here are “Help!” for vulnerability, and “Within You and Without You,” for humility. She also writes about her own leadership journey, and discusses principles of mentorship and collaboration. She uses the example of a product manager, and how that person’s work fits into an organization. She writes that the “role of a product manager in a technical organization provides a great example of a vulnerable leader.” For humility, she writes about a leader she knows who embodies that term: Anand Deshpande, founder, chair, and managing director of the software firm Persistent Systems in India, a publicly traded global technology service provider. The characteristics of humility that she further describes are self‐awareness, gratitude, integrity, learning, and listening. Within learning, she writes: “Read voraciously. Reflect on what you read and then write. Your thoughts are clarified, and you can make sense of what you read when you do. Influential leaders are lifelong learners.”

The impact of optimal parcel locker locations on costs and the environment

PurposeLast-mile delivery is associated with a negative environmental impact and high costs. The purpose of this paper is to develop an approach to designing stationary parcel locker (SPL) networks while minimizing both CO2 equivalent (CO2e) emissions and costs during delivery and pick-up.Design/methodology/approachThis study uses a multinomial logit model to evaluate recipients' willingness to use SPLs based on their availability at home and travel distance. To determine optimal SPL locations, this study formulates a mixed-integer linear programming model.FindingsThe empirical study of different regional clusters reveals that optimal SPL locations can generate cost savings of up to 11.0%. SPLs have a positive impact on total CO2e emission savings in urban areas (i.e. up to 2.5%), but give rise to additional emissions (i.e. 4.6%) in less populated areas due to longer travel distances during the pick-up process.Originality/valueThis paper optimizes SPL locations and the ecological effect of SPLs by minimizing emissions and costs simultaneously. Furthermore, it extends existing discrete choice models by also including recipients' availability at home, increasing the accuracy of recipients' preferences. So far, the effect of SPLs has been studied for metropolitan areas only. A global logistics service provider shared a real dataset which allows us to study seven different regional clusters ranging from rural areas to large cities. Thus, this study contributes to the field of sustainable urban logistics.

Detecting Outlier Machine Instances Through Gaussian Mixture Variational Autoencoder With One Dimensional CNN

Today&#x0027;s large datacenters house a massive number of machines, each of which is being closely monitored with multivariate time series (e.g., CPU idle, memory utilization) to ensure service quality. Detecting outlier machine instances with multivariate time series is crucial for service management. However, it is a challenging task due to the multiple classes and various shapes, high dimensionality, and lack of labels of multivariate time series. In this article, we propose DOMI, a novel unsupervised model that combines Gaussian mixture VAE with 1D-CNN, to <b>d</b>etect <b>o</b>utlier <b>m</b>achine <b>i</b>nstances. Its core idea is to capture the normal patterns of machine instances by learning their latent representations that consider the shape characteristics, reconstruct input data by the learned representations, and apply reconstruction probabilities to determine outliers. Moreover, DOMI interprets the detected outlier instance based on the reconstruction probability changes of univariate time series. Extensive experiments have been conducted on the dataset collected from 1821 machines with a 1.5-month-period, which are deployed in ByteDance, a top global content service provider. DOMI achieves the best F1-Score of 0.94 and AUC score of 0.99, significantly outperforming the best performing baseline method by 0.08 and 0.03, respectively. Moreover, its interpretation accuracy is up to 0.93.

The impact of industry 4.0 on the 2017 version of the Uppsala model

The emergence of Industry 4.0 offers firms internationalization opportunities employing digital platforms and emerging technologies. Relying upon the Uppsala model as applied in light of a firm case study, we contribute to the validity of the Uppsala model 2017. We respond to the counterpoint by Coviello, Kano, and Liesch (2017) to the Uppsala 2017 model, answering the question, What is the impact of Industry 4.0 on the validity of the 2017 version of the Uppsala model? This study builds on a qualitative research methodology through a single case study of Delivery Hero, a global service provider firm. We adopt an extensive longitudinal approach to understand a startup firm’s digital business concept and business evolution, including its internationalization paths. We conclude that the mechanisms of the Uppsala model are valid, but their characteristics have changed by digital and globalized value-adding processes. The dynamic capabilities possessed by the founding entrepreneur turn out to constitute a critical micro foundation for the firm’s international business success. Our findings explain these change mechanisms, illustrating the stepwise progression process led by entrepreneurial decision-making. Industry 4.0 technologies have changed the very manner by which firms arrange their value-adding activities with their business stakeholders in course of the firm’s internationalization. By relying on reasonable business targets, algorithms, and data management systems, real-time market monitoring enables international startup firms to learn and adopt local identities faster, thereby efficiently alleviating liabilities of foreignness.

Supply chain risk management in the COVID-19 pandemic: strategies and empirical lessons for improving global logistics service providers’ performance

PurposeThe enormous impact of the COVID-19 pandemic showcases the key role of supply chain risk management (SCRM) in achieving and maintaining business performance, competitiveness and survival in the “new normal”. The purpose of this paper is to explore what impact the COVID-19 pandemic has had and may yet have on supply chains (SCs), which SCRM approaches have proved successful and how logistics service providers (LSPs) have applied the knowledge they have gained to improve their SCRM practices and resilience so as to prepare better for the next major disruption.Design/methodology/approachThis paper combines an extensive literature review with a multiple-case study of 10 internationally operating LSPs and how they have handled the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic so far. To bridge the research-practice gap, this study draws on the dynamic-capabilities view and provide insights that are valuable to both academia and practice.FindingsThis study provides empirical evidence on the severe impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on SCs, which has posed several challenges to LSPs. The study identifies eight factors that are critical to the adaptive capabilities of LSPs and, therefore, to their resilience in extreme conditions. The findings of this study show that these factors determine whether an SCRM system is robust and agile enough to allow an LSP to anticipate potential disruption and to respond fast enough when disruption occurs. Specifically, this study finds that robustness and agility demonstrably strengthen business performance, while learning from experience proves key to reconfiguring an SCRM design in response to acute disruption.Originality/valueThis paper is among the first to provide rich, empirical and practically applicable insights into the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on business in relation to SCRM. These novel insights offer inspiring opportunities for further research.

The Circular Data Centre Compass – modelling and assessing data centre sustainability

Data centres (DC) house electrical and electronic data processing and storage equipment. The data centre industry has grown from zero in the late 1980s into a global service provider with over 7 million sites in 2021. This rapid sectoral growth presents many challenges to environmental, social, and economic sustainability including the generation of large quantities of e-waste, (which is exacerbated by an under-developed recycling infrastructure, and a limited market for second life products) and potential threat to material supply chains, specifically Critical Raw Materials. There is an urgent need to improve sectoral sustainability, which includes development of a Circular Economy. The CEDaCI (a Circular Economy for the Data Centre Industry) project was launched in 2018 to initiate this by demonstrating its viability though business case studies, physical prototypes and digital tools, a key example being the Circular Data Centre Compass (CDCC) – a unique online tool that includes original primary source data. This tool allows users to compare and assess the overall life cycle sustainability of different servers, the criticality of embodied materials and the circularity of current and proposed designs. Therefore, the CDCC improves overall life cycle management of data centres, which increases supply chain security and reduces risk of DC service interruption.

Reverse engineering rebuild is a winner

Rather than replacing a significantly worn descaling pump, a global aftermarket pump service provider helped a New Zealand steel company save time, money and efficiency by reverse engineering and rebuilding it with significant upgrades to improve the mean time between repairs.

Virtual storage plants in parking lots of electric vehicles providing local/global power system support

In recent years, the penetration of Renewable energy sources (RES) has increased considerably in power systems. Besides, fossil fuel vehicles are gradually replaced with electric ones. Increasing the penetration of RES on the supply side and the penetration of Plug-in electric vehicles (PEVs) on the demand side, intermittency of the power system increases. This paper proposes a novel structure for Virtual storage plants (VSP) to integrate the storage potentials of the PEVs into power systems. The suggested VSP is comprised of smart charging stations, Parking lot aggregator (PLA), Local service provider (LSP), and Global service provider (GSP). The PLA coordinates the charging/discharging strategies of the PEVs based on the flexibility requirements of the supply side. The LSP aims to mitigate congestion in weak lines of the power network. The GSP provides up-/down-regulation for the wholesale electricity market when a power shortage/excess occurs in the power systems. On the supply side, the electricity market is comprised of three trading floors, including the day-ahead, intraday, and balancing markets. The VSP integrates the storage potentials of the PEVs to the three market floors hierarchically on long, mid, and short advance notices. The electricity price data are extracted from the Danish electricity market. The suggested approach is examined on the IEEE 14-bus system. The results show that the suggested VSP provides local and global energy security for the power system during critical hours.

국내외 주요 SVOD 사업자들의 콘텐츠 전략 유형에 대한 연구

구독 기반 주문형 비디오(SVOD) 시장의 급격한 성장과 함께 이용자 확보를 위한 다양한 사업자들 간의 경쟁 또한 더욱 치열해지고 있다. 이러한 시점에서 각 SVOD 사업자들은 콘텐츠 경쟁력을 확보하기 위한 다채로운 전략을 수립해 실천하고 있다. 본 연구는 국내외 주요 SVOD 사업자의 콘텐츠 전략을 분석하여 그 전략을 유형화하고 국내 SVOD 사업자의 관점에서 유의미한 시사점을 도출하는 것을 목적으로 한다. 본 연구는 사례분석을 주요 연구방법으로 채택하여 11개 주요 SVOD 사업자들의 콘텐츠 전략에 대한 사례연구를 진행했다. 특히 콘텐츠 전략을 콘텐츠 확보, 콘텐츠 전달, 콘텐츠 관리라는 세 가지 축으로 나누어 분석을 실시했다. 연구 결과, 주요 콘텐츠 전략으로 편집샵, 플래그십 스토어, 기념품 샵 유형이 도출됐고 사례분석의 대상이 된 사업자들의 콘텐츠 전략이 어느 유형에 속하는 지도 분석됐다. 본 연구의 결론에서는 국내 SVOD 사업자들의 콘텐츠 전략에 대한 시사점과 함께 본 연구의 한계가 제시됐다.

Towards a framework for trustworthy data security level agreement in cloud procurement

After the post-Snowden upheavals, there is a growing concern about preserving the confidentiality of sensitive data across government agencies when using global cloud service providers, such as Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure. The use of certification schemes is becoming more critical to assure the security of services offered. This situation is problematic because many certification schemes aim to demonstrate compliance with a security standard rather than achieve a specified security level. Despite the benefits of security certification schemes like Common Criteria (CC), an assurance-based certification process does not scale well to service provision. To this end, this paper aims to investigate the concept of system assurance and trustworthiness in service provisioning, especially when government agencies procure cloud-based services. By using work on the Indonesian Government's data confidentiality requirements, this work develops principles as foundations for a trustworthy data security level agreement (TDSLA) capability framework as a new assurance mechanism for service provisioning based on discrete levels of security assurance incorporated into the formulation of a service level agreement (SLA). The principles which have emerged from the empirical qualitative data collection were evaluated and validated using four approaches: 1) reflection against related work; 2) testimonial validity through participants’ feedback; 3) use cases, and 4) application of transferability using cases from the UK Government Cloud (G-Cloud) and the US Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program (FedRAMP). The TDSLA capability framework can form the basis for constructing a legal language in contracts or SLAs.