ICT Ecosystem Research Articles

Swarm-intelligence for the modern ICT ecosystems

Swarm-intelligence for the modern ICT ecosystems

Decent, Inclusive, and Green? Mission Impossible?

This article discusses the interconnection between the green transition and the digital transformation, known as the twin transition. The article analyses the specific role of digitalisation and its impact on a regional entrepreneurial ICT ecosystem in Sofia, Bulgaria, where the digital transformation has led to decent work in the ICT sector but is completely disconnected from the green transition. The article argues that these processes need a policy lever to develop in parallel with one another and connect, as they are rather disconnected.

Big Data as a research proposal applied to Data Quality for the correct Government of an ICT Ecosystem

Big Data as a research proposal applied to Data Quality for the correct Government of an ICT Ecosystem

Generative or Exclusionary? How Ecosystems Evolve with Coordination and Standardization

The literature typically depicts ecosystem evolution as “generative”, with coordination fueling growth in complements and complementors. We suggest that it could instead be “exclusionary”, where complements increase but complementors do not grow meaningfully and core component owners dominate the complementary areas with their own complements. Using a descriptive approach and data on ICT ecosystems adopting standard setting as coordination mechanism, we systematically trace how ecosystems evolve alongside standardization, indicating signs of “exclusionary” growth. We further describe how exclusionary growth occurs – core component owners exploit standardization and litigation to crowd out other complementors over time. Findings suggest that core component owners’ strategy to coordinate across complementors is interdependent with their choice to integrate into complementary areas, and that standardization is not merely a coordination mechanism but can be used strategically to stifle competition from complementors. Findings also help substantiate the practical threat that core components owners could exhibit monopolistic behavior in ecosystems.

The Role of Digitalization in the Target Scenario of Russian Economic Development.

—The article considers the contribution of the ICT sector to the medium- and long-term development of the Russian economy. The target scenario of Russian economic development and the conditions necessary for its implementation are analyzed. The necessity of completing the ICT Ecosystem to full cycle is substantiated. The strategies of fostering “national champions” are analyzed, and a target strategy is defined.

A China e a economia política internacional das tecnologias da informação e comunicação

Objetiva-se, aqui, analisar a posição da China na economia política internacional das TIC em relação aos EUA, com foco na disputa pelo 5G. Para tal, o artigo considera a concorrência no ecossistema de TIC, apoiado em relações estreitas entre estado e capital, sob três prismas: o econômico, o militar e o de vigilância internacional. Postula-se que a renovação da infraestrutura global de telecomunicações coloca em jogo a redefinição das fronteiras dos sistemas internacionais de vigilância e o reposicionamento das firmas de tecnologia e das economias no sistema industrial, enquanto consagra a infraestrutura civil crítica como um alvo central nos cálculos militares. Embora a China seja líder no 5G, os EUA detêm pode estrutural no ecossistema de TIC e podem obstruir seus avanços.

Unified and standalone monitoring module for NFV/SDN infrastructures

In the ongoing process of telecommunications systems softwarization, a key role is played by Virtual Network Functions deployed in Cloud environments and interconnected through Software Defined Networks. The separation between data, control and service logic changes the way in which those systems are designed, operated, and capitalized, and also enables elasticity, flexibility and cost-efficiency in the whole ICT ecosystem. However, dedicated and reliable monitoring tools are required to take full advantage of software-based telecommunication systems. Such tools are expected to effectively combine metrics about various assets to provide a global view over the infrastructure, offload control plane from monitoring tasks to improve scalability, and be seamlessly integrated with the existing control plane through the interface. In this paper, we propose a monitoring module that meets the requirements imposed by the softwarization process. We present the reference architecture for the proposed solution, along with the fundamental assumptions we have based our work upon, and a Proof-of-Concept implementation. Our solution has been designed as a standalone Virtual Network Function, fully decoupled from the existing control plane. As a result, new features and degrees of freedom are available, especially in terms of adaptability to the heterogeneous softwarized infrastructure, with no modifications needed in the existing software or hardware components. The proposed modular architecture, supported by proper interfaces, can be integrated with a variety of tools to collects statistics from different assets, relieving the control plane from the burden of computational-intensive monitoring tasks.In order to carefully validate the design of the proposed unified and standalone monitoring module numerous scenarios addressing various aspects and potential impediments were considered, in a series of experiments run on our internal testbeds and on an auxiliary public cloud environment. The obtained results prove that our monitoring tool provides significant advantages with respect to the existing solutions which are integrated in the control plane. Therefore, it is able to cooperate with sophisticated traffic steering and cloud management mechanisms operating on the combined network and computing resources. Furthermore, we demonstrate that our solution is easily portable, for instance to a public cloud environment.

Analysis of the Needs of ICT Ecosystems to Support the Acceleration of Internet Fixed Broadband Penetration (case: Bogor, Sumedang, Bangli, and Karangasem)

<p class="JGI-AbstractIsi">This study is conducted to see the potential demand with the characteristics of the campus environment, industrial environment, and tourism environment on internet fixed broadband use, where the objective of this survey is limited to households, individuals and businesses. Analysis is carried out in a descriptive manner based on the results of qualitative discussions by experts which is reinforced by the findings of the survey results. The survey results show that the internet utilization by the public (households, businesses) is mostly for communication and entertainment, so that the cellular internet is considered adequate for public's internet need. This is relevant to the public’s opinion that 87.9% of the internet needs are met when using cellular phone. There are 3 (three) perceptible reasons of why respondents choose not to subscribe to Fixed broadband internet, namely: 1) There is no necessity for subscription, 2) Lack of Knowledge/Information related to Broadband Fixed internet, and 3) Expensive Prices. The potential demand for each characteristic is always there, however, the most dominant one comes from the businesses, such as cafes/eateries, food stores, gift shops, photocopying businesses, vehicle rental services, travel businesses, etc.<strong></strong></p>

Analysis of the Needs of ICT Ecosystems to Support the Acceleration of Internet Fixed Broadband Penetration (case: Bogor, Sumedang, Bangli, and Karangasem)

This study is conducted to see the potential demand with the characteristics of the campus environment, industrial environment, and tourism environment on internet fixed broadband use, where the objective of this survey is limited to households, individuals and businesses. Analysis is carried out in a descriptive manner based on the results of qualitative discussions by experts which is reinforced by the findings of the survey results. The survey results show that the internet utilization by the public (households, businesses) is mostly for communication and entertainment, so that the cellular internet is considered adequate for public's internet need. This is relevant to the public’s opinion that 87.9% of the internet needs are met when using cellular phone. There are 3 (three) perceptible reasons of why respondents choose not to subscribe to Fixed broadband internet, namely: 1) There is no necessity for subscription, 2) Lack of Knowledge/Information related to Broadband Fixed internet, and 3) Expensive Prices. The potential demand for each characteristic is always there, however, the most dominant one comes from the businesses, such as cafes/eateries, food stores, gift shops, photocopying businesses, vehicle rental services, travel businesses, etc.

Comparative analysis of formation and development of electronic government in Ukraine and Estonia

The article reveals the essence of e-government and conducts comparative analysis of the formation and development of e-government in Estonia and Ukraine. The comparative analysis in this study is used to establish logical patterns that influence the formation and development of e-government, as well as to search for advantages, determine the boundaries and possibilities of using the experience of Estonia for the development of e-government in Ukraine. Particular attention is paid to the analysis of ICT infrastructure, since its inconsistency with the current level of development is one of the main problems for the country, and the solution of this issue is important to increase the level of readiness for the introduction of e-government, the development of which, in turn, is one of the main factors for successful reforming and improving the country’s competitiveness. Comparative analysis of the indicators of the ICT-infrastructure of Ukraine and Estonia at the regional and global levels has been conducted. For a holistic study of the environment in which e-government is developing, an ecosystem approach is used that provides the ability to analyze both direct and indirect impacts on the ICT ecosystem and assess the consequences of environmental quality changes (digital, legal, etc.) for the development of the process under study. Based on the analysis of the possibilities of using the Estonian experience in Ukraine, an assessment of the expected effect of the implementation of the proposed measures is carried out. The main directions of the further development of e-government in Ukraine in the legal, administrative, financial, infrastructure and social spheres are identified.

Vulnerability assessment as a service for fog-centric ICT ecosystems: A healthcare use case

Modern ICT ecosystems such as healthcare environments (hospitals, care-centers etc.), operate in different abstraction layers (cloud, fog, extreme-edge) and comprise large numbers of network entities such as terminals, devices, sensors or even specialized appliances (virtual or physical). It is common in such environments, that several network entities with intermittent connectivity, join and leave the network in an unstructured and unsupervised manner (Wi-Fi access-points, BYOD policies, IoT, etc.). Such devices of frivolous nature, or even trusted devices/terminals, are prone to security vulnerabilities, since they are operated by regular, non-expert users who are not aware of any security aspects whatsoever. To effectively manage and proactively protect such large, complex and multilayered networks, dedicated personnel (system administrators, security specialists etc.) must be employed and specialized appliances must be deployed. On the other hand, modern cyber-warfare has become even more elaborate and insightful. Thus, ICT infrastructures must continuously evolve and adapt to the everchanging cyber-threats, which is a rather cumbersome and expensive task to accomplish. Towards addressing the above-mentioned issues, this paper proposes a cross-layered system, which leverages the Software Defined Networking (SDN) paradigm and the distributed Fog architecture, for network slicing and task offloading to provide dynamic, security-aware Vulnerability-Assessment as a service for large ICT infrastructures. The presented system provides seamless assessment for all existing and newly introduced network entities against all known security vulnerabilities, certifies them through a Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS), classifies them according to the cyber-threat they introduce, and finally assigns them to a connectivity-appropriate VLAN. The presented system was preliminarily evaluated under a controlled-conditions simulation environment.

The dynamics of national ICT ecosystems

AbstractThe ICT ecosystem is a new and emerging concept which suggests that ICTs should not be viewed as technical systems in insolation, but rather as a part of a wider network that takes into account non‐technical dynamics, being socio‐economic, political, spatial, and such. Nguyen, Nielsen, and Sæbø (2017) have conceptualized the national ICT ecosystem which adequately describes the socio‐technical components surrounding an ICT embedded within a country. However, their conceptualization is merely a static description of the ecosystems' components without sufficient description of their dynamics. Based on a case study of a health management information system and its surrounding ecosystem in Tanzania, we contribute by identifying three dynamics of national ICT ecosystems: (1) evolution occurring in small and incremental steps; (2) co‐adaption in the ecosystem following integrations between ICTs; and (3) ICTs being integrated due to perceived network effects.

Evaluation of Policy and Regulatory Challenges of DFS ICT Ecosystem in Zambia

DFS regulations including that of mobile money services have been discussed at length in Sub-Saharan region as the answer to financially include the poor and providing access to affordable financial services. Their set up costs are cheaper than traditional Brick and Mortar banking services and Africa is thriving at these initiatives as it benefits the underserved. This research, explored the challenges of the Policies and regulations of digital financial services on Zambia’s ICT infrastructure and brought out the inadequacies of the current Banking and ICT regulations. The research further compared Zambia’s regulatory challenges with similar World Bank findex ranked developing countries around the globe. The discussion focused on the merits of overlapping jurisdictions of the Banking and ICT regulations and how they allows for enabling ICT environment and how to improve the overall underlying financial landscape and the financial inclusion ecosystem for the unbanked. Based on the research results, the study concludes by comparing the financial risks thresholds and the tiered bands of regulation which are directly proportional and leads to increase in financial inclusion and brings about the convergence of traditional financial services and mobile financial services (MFS). The study further provides recommendations on the need for a consolidated, enabling, interoperable and harmonized set of policies and regulation to avoid restrictive regulations and allow for innovation in this space for the successful implementation of DFS in Zambia.

The influence of ICT megatrends on global megatrends

In this paper, the author analyses the significant influence of IT on global megatrends. Of the five leading global megatrends, two are in the field of ICT, digital media and new technologies. The main reasons for the impact of IT megatrends are twofold: (1) the digital convergence of the media, ICT and telecommunications industries, (2)the exponential increase in information, computing power and internet transfer data. Digital convergence will significantly contribute to changing business models. In an applicative sense, the author considers the concepts of Industry 4.0 - The Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR), to be the most significant as it marks the paradigmatic change of information, the conceptual and processual transformation of data and services ecosystems in the domains of robotics, the Internet of Things (IoT), Internet of Services, Automated Intelligence, Collaborative Robots (Cobots), Industrial Robots, Augmented Reality, and Virtual Reality. In business and strategic terms, digital media business models will transition, under the influence of digital convergence, to a multi-platform, complementary, interoperable and networked media and ICT ecosystem with a specific focus on the production and distribution of media products, services and applications within the user interface, hypermedia, immersion, mass customization, personalized, augmented and ambient media business space and environment.

On the Construction of a Qualitative Model of the Russian ICT Ecosystem

This paper has analyzed the Russian ICT Ecosystem based on the concept of innovation ecosystems. A qualitative model of the ICT Ecosystem (in the matrix form) has been proposed that is based on an analysis of the exchange of resources (commodity-material resources, current financial resources, capital, manpower resources) among participants in the ecosystem. The constructed quality model and primary analysis of the statistical data were used as the basis for obtaining a number of important conclusions regarding the structural features of the Russian ICT Ecosystem.

Digital governance: Research design of a comprehensive research program to analyse ICT driven transformation

The paper presents the theoretical foundations and research design of a comprehensive research program initiated at the National University of Public Service for exploring the complex dynamics of digital transformation of governance and government. In alignment with the Danube Region Strategy the initiative is based on two main pillars: a) concepts of territorial and cross-border governance especially exploring the process from whole-of-government to social participation, and b) information management focusing on ICT ecosystems and project management. Based on these two pillars three drivers of digital transformation are defined which are very tightly intertwined in the research design. The first is what we collectively address as e-services including legaltechnical-organizational solutions, citizens´ acceptance and the complex notion of accessibility with trust. The second driver in our model is the appearance of “smartness” in governance both centrally and locally – spanning from knowledge management to smart communities in symbiosis with smart technologies. Finally, the third set of drivers for digital transition is the capability for innovation and change including management and organizations, social impacts of industry 4.0., and a modified Balanced Scorecard system for administration. The paper presents the key research questions in each pillar and maps how institutional collaborations (amongst 7 Hungarian, 3 European and 2 North-American universities) address them methodologically.

Measuring efficiency and ICT ecosystem impact: Hardware vs. software industry

The ICT industry is reshaping itself through convergence and coopetition across the ecosystem. In particular, many ICT companies have been trying to achieve both hardware and software capabilities to accelerate innovation. To understand the changes in the ICT industry, we empirically study the hardware and software industries using the ecosystem framework. We estimate the efficiency levels of the hardware and software industries in China, Japan, South Korea, and the United States (US) using stochastic frontier analysis and meta frontier analysis, and we examine the effects of the ICT ecosystem structure on efficiency levels using a Tobit regression. We find that the US, which is the global ICT leader, performs significantly better than other countries, with the biggest technology gap ratios in both hardware and software, and South Korea, which has the most hardware-centric industrial structure among the four countries, has the biggest efficiency gap between the hardware and software industries. Tobit results further reveal that a well-balanced ecosystem is important in achieving high efficiency in both hardware and software, and the effect is much higher in the software industry than in the hardware industry.

Effect of a policy intervention on handset subsidies on the intention to change handsets and households’ expenses in mobile telecommunications

This study examined effect of a policy intervention that provides an upper limit for handset subsidies on users’ intention to change handset and households’ expenses on mobile telecommunications. The Korean government has prohibited mobile network providers from providing excessive subsidies for mobile handsets to attract subscribers since Nov. 2014 according to the mobile act. Using the exogenous variation, we estimate the impact of the policy on the intention to change handsets and expenses on handset installment, total mobile communications, and online content. The longitudinal data are from the 2014 to 2015 waves of the Korea Media Panel Survey. The mobile act lowered the predicted probability of switching handsets by 0.4% points. Moreover, the mobile act increased the predicted probability of any expense on handset installment by 7.5% points and had a significant impact on the amount of expenses on handset installment, with an increase of 7.8%. The mobile act lowered users’ willingness to switch handsets and increased spending on handset installment. This increased burden in handset installment might shrink the online content market, which has a large need for government support, as well as decrease consumers’ welfare. We assert that the policy intervention on handset subsidies is questionable with regard to both consumer welfare and the healthiness of the ICT ecosystem.

Analysing innovation-driven enterprises' stakeholders in two spatial ICT ecosystems

Innovation-driven enterprises (IDEs) engage with various stakeholders during new product development and commercialisation. Spatial ecosystems in which these enterprises operate provide them with the local business environment for new innovation development. Our study analyses IDEs' stakeholders in two spatial information and communication technology business ecosystems: one in San Diego, CA, USA and the other in Oulu, Finland. The study analyses the stakeholders' presence and their roles to support innovation. The critical stakeholders for supporting IDEs, such as providers of different forms of capital and research institutes, are identified. Our findings suggest that IDEs should exploit the spatial ecosystems by interacting with various stakeholders and by gaining access to local resources to create new innovations. The results of the study are beneficial both for managers of new innovation-driven ventures and decision-makers for designing and implementing innovation policies.

Analysing innovation-driven enterprises' stakeholders in two spatial ICT ecosystems

Innovation-driven enterprises (IDEs) engage with various stakeholders during new product development and commercialisation. Spatial ecosystems in which these enterprises operate provide them with the local business environment for new innovation development. Our study analyses IDEs' stakeholders in two spatial information and communication technology business ecosystems: one in San Diego, CA, USA and the other in Oulu, Finland. The study analyses the stakeholders' presence and their roles to support innovation. The critical stakeholders for supporting IDEs, such as providers of different forms of capital and research institutes, are identified. Our findings suggest that IDEs should exploit the spatial ecosystems by interacting with various stakeholders and by gaining access to local resources to create new innovations. The results of the study are beneficial both for managers of new innovation-driven ventures and decision-makers for designing and implementing innovation policies.