High Quality Information Technology Services Research Articles

AN INTEGRATIVE AGILE ITSM FRAMEWORK OF TENETS AND PRACTICES – ITS DESIGN AND EXPLORATORY UTILIZATION

ABSTRACT The modern business environment and global covid-19 pandemic effects have led to any relevant business organizational activity, like e-commerce, to rely on on-premise and cloud information technology (IT) services. To deliver high-quality IT services, plan-driven IT Service Management (ITSM) frameworks and standards have been used in business organizations in the last two decades. Nowadays, new and claimed agile ITSM frameworks and standards have emerged but there is a scarcity of studies on their extent of agility coverage. This research addresses this knowledge gap. First, we elaborated a plausible Integrative Agile ITSM Framework of Tenets and Practices from a selective review of the main related SwE and ITSM literature. Second, we populated the integrative framework with all available evidence about the agile tenets and practices reported in the official publications of the new five ITSM frameworks and standards. Third, we explored its utilization with a Panel of ITSM Experts for ranking how much the new five ITSM frameworks and standards fit the integrative framework. Exploratory results revealed high concordance among experts to qualify ITIL v4 and VeriSM as agile, and FitSM, and the two ISO/IEC standards as lightweight but not agile. This research contributes to the ITSM literature with an Integrative Agile ITSM Framework of Tenets and Practices, and the ITSM practice with an exploratory evaluation from ITSM experts on the adherence to it from the new five ITSM frameworks and standards. Given the critical dependence of any business activity on IT services, further theoretical and empirical research is worthy to be pursued.

Antecedents and mediating role of IT service climate in IT service quality: A mixed methods study

Developing a strong and positive information technology (IT) service climate is important to ensure high-quality IT services. The influence of job resources and personal resources on the IT service climate and the mediating effect of the IT service climate on IT service quality were explored in this study qualitatively and quantitatively. Among the various job resource factors, we found that training, reward, and information system (IS) support can improve the IT service climate. Coworker support shows a non-significant effect on IT service climate. Among the personal resource factors, self-efficacy and hope have significantly positive effects on the IT service climate. Optimism and resilience do not appear to significantly affect the IT service climate. Our results confirm that the IT service climate is an important mediator in enabling certain antecedents to properly impact IT service quality. The IT service climate was found to fully mediate the effects of training, reward, IS support, and hope while partially mediating the effect of self-efficacy. The effect of the IT service climate on IT service quality is also strengthened by a high customer contact frequency. The results presented here may provide scholars and practitioners with a comprehensive, workable understanding of the IT service climate.

An empirical investigation of botnet as a service for cyberattacks

AbstractDuring the last years, cloud computing has emerged and imposed itself as a cost‐effective solution for providing high quality Information Technology services. However, beyond a legitimate usage, the benefits of cloud computing are being exploited by attackers in nefarious ways and botnets are among the greatest beneficiaries of this malicious use. This botnet trend is a major issue because it strongly increases the power of massive distributed attacks when leveraging the capabilities of cloud service providers that do not have appropriate detection approaches in place to detect botnets exploiting cloud resources (also referred to as botclouds). We developed a free experimental intra–Cloud Service Provider (CSP) botnet that exploits CSPs' trial versions. We used this intra‐CSP botnet to execute numerous TCP SYN flood and UDP flood attacks during one week. Our empirical results demonstrate that, contrary to what CSPs claim, all the CSPs (with the exception of one) we have tested still cannot detect or issued no warnings when malicious activities were launched from their cloud computing platforms. Besides, CSP's trial versions can easily be exploited to perpetrate large scale cyberattacks. We argue that efficient, cost‐effective, scalable detection approaches that can detect botclouds need to be developed in the future to address this challenge.

Getting back on track: change management at AfrobitLink Ltd

Synopsis AfrobitLink Ltd was an information technology (IT) firm with headquarters in Lagos, Nigeria. AfrobitLink started as a very small IT firm with less than two dozen staff. Within a few years of its founding, AfrobitLink established itself as a dependable organization known for delivering high-quality IT services. However, starting in 2004, AfrobitLink experienced rapid growth as it expanded to serve the telecommunications firms taking advantage of the deregulated market. This rapid expansion resulted in many challenges for AfrobitLink. The firm rapidly expanded into all 36 states in Nigeria, hiring a manager to oversee the company’s operations in each of the states. Poor hiring practices, inadequate training, excessive spans of control, low accountability, a subjective reward system, and other cultural issues, such as a relaxed attitude to time, resulted in low motivation, high employee turnover, poor customer service, and financial losses. By 2013, the firm was operating at a loss and its reputation was in shambles. Generally, the culture was toxic: employees did not identify with the firm or care about its goals, there were no performance standards, employees were not held accountable, self-interest and discrimination prevailed. The organization was in a downward spiral. Consultants were hired to help sort out the firm’s problems but these efforts yielded few results. Ken Wilson, the founder’s son, was hired in 2014 as VP of Administration to help get the firm back on track. As a change agent, Ken had to decide how to address the issues facing the firm and how to achieve profitable growth. Research methodology Primary sources included interviews with the company CEO, his wife, his son, and a volunteer staff member. Secondary sources included the company website. The names of the people and the firm in the case have been changed to provide anonymity. Relevant courses and levels This case is intended for use in graduate courses (although it can also be used in upper level undergraduate courses) in change management/organization development, organizational behavior, leadership, or international management. For graduate courses, students may focus on application or integration of several theories or concepts. For upper level undergraduate courses, students may focus on application of a single theory or concept. Below are suggested texts or readings for each type of student by subject. Theoretical bases Change management theories (e.g. Lewin’s force field analysis (Schein, 1996), Kotter’s eight-step change management process (Kotter, 2007), The change kaleidoscope approach (Balogun and Hailey, 2008)), social identity theory (Tajfel, 1981), attribution theory (Kelley, 1972), leadership theories (e.g. Hersey and Blanchard, 1969), intercultural/international management theories (e.g. Hofstede, 1980, 1991).

IT Service Management Employee Compensation: Determinants and Outcomes

Information technology (IT) service management (ITSM) is a critical function of an IT organization and it is important to recruit, manage, and retain qualified ITSM employees who are responsible for providing IT services to an organization. Organizations rely on their in-house ITSM team and the outsourced IT systems (or business processes) to deliver high quality IT services. While IT outsourcing has become a norm in many organizations, its potential impact on in-house ITSM employee compensation and job outcomes, such as job satisfaction and turnover intentions, has remained under-examined. We develop a model that examines the interplay between human capital factors such as educational qualifications, employee compensation, employee job outcomes, and two organizational factors–IT outsourcing and ITSM size. We conducted a survey of ITSM employees from 423 organizations and found support for the model. Our findings have important theoretical and practical implications.

Regulating Response Time in an Autonomic Computing System: A Comparison of Proportional Control and Fuzzy Control Approaches

Ecommerce is an area where an Autonomic Computing system could be very effectively deployed. Ecommerce has created demand for high quality information technology services and businesses are seeking quality of service guarantees from their service providers. These guarantees are expressed as part of service level agreements. Properly adjusting tuning parameters for enforcement of the service level agreement is time-consuming and skills-intensive. Moreover, in case of changes to the workload, the setting of the parameters may no longer be optimum. In an ecommerce system, where the workload changes frequently, there is a need to update the parameters at regular intervals. This paper describes two approaches, one, using a proportional controller and two, using a fuzzy controller, to automate the tuning of MaxClients parameter of Apache web server based on the required response time and the current workload. This is an illustration of the self-optimizing characteristic of an autonomic computing system.

Delivering High-Quality Information Technology Services: Managing Expectations/Measuring Results

Delivering High-Quality Information Technology Services: Managing Expectations/Measuring Results