Investment In IT Infrastructure Research Articles

Agility and Cloud Computing: Key Enablers for Knowledge Management Systems Implementation in Algerian Small to Medium-Sized Organisations

The implementation of knowledge management systems (KMS) necessitates an important investment in human resources and IT infrastructure. Most of small to medium-sized organisations (SMOs), especially from emerging markets countries, cannot afford the implementation of this kind of systems traditionally reserved to resourceful organisations. On the other hand, the last decade has known an increasing interest in the domains of agility and cloud computing. The main contribution of this paper is to present through two case studies, how two Algerian SMOs have leveraged agility and/or cloud computing to implement KMS. The main findings of a qualitative data collection process are that: 1) SMOs are attracted by the facts that the agile-based method require fewer human resources; 2) after an obvious reluctance, SMOs consider that cloud-based externalised infrastructure are not only interesting at the financial level but also, at the administrative level.

Competitiveness of Polish enterprises in relation to the potential of cloud computing

Enterprises seek for possibilities to limit the costs and for areas that stimulate the level of innovation. Both of these aspects can be effectively supported by application of cloud computing, without a simultaneous need to make a choice of a trade-off type. The aim of the article is to prove that cloud computing provides entrepreneurs with the possibility to limit the costs and at the same time to support their activities related to the selected direction of innovation development. It has both a direct influence on the level and structure of costs in the enterprise, as well as an indirect influence, e.g. related to shortening the time for introduction of new solutions to the market, making decisions or limiting the costs of projects.

클라우드 컴퓨팅 환경에서 자원의 사용률을 이용한 소비전력 예측 방안

최근 클라우드 컴퓨팅 기술이 발전함에 따라, 언제 어디서나 스마트 폰이나 컴퓨터로 접속하여 업무를 처리할 수 있다. 또한 IT 인프라를 구축하기 위한 초기투자비용과 유지보수에 대한 부담을 줄이는 방안으로 적합하다고 여겨지면서 클라우드 컴퓨팅은 발전하였다. 클라우드 컴퓨팅의 수요가 급격하게 늘어남에 따라, 데이터센터의 환경을 유지하기 위해 소비되는 전력에 관한 문제가 발생하였다. 이 문제를 해결하기 위해서는 먼저 소비전력을 측정할 수 있어야 한다. 비록 전력측정기를 이용하여 소비전력을 측정하는 것은 정확한 소비전력을 얻을 수 있지만, 추가비용이 발생한다. 따라서 본 논문에서는 전력측정기에 의존하지 않고 소비전력을 예측하는 방안을 제시한다. 제시한 방안의 정확성을 입증하기 위해 클라우드 컴퓨팅 환경에서 CPU와 Hard disk 테스트를 실시하였다. 테스트가 진행되는 동안, 제안한 방안과 전력측정기에 의해 예측 값과 실제 값을 얻고. 오차율을 계산하였다. 그 결과 CPU 테스트에서 예측 값과 실제 값의 차이는 약 4.22%이고, Hard disk 테스트에서는 약 8.51%을 보였다. Recently, as cloud computing technologies are developed, it enable to work anytime and anywhere by smart phone and computer. Also, cloud computing technologies are suited to reduce costs of maintaining IT infrastructure and initial investment, so cloud computing has been developed. As demand about cloud computing has risen sharply, problems of power consumption are occurred to maintain the environment of data center. To solve the problem, first of all, power consumption has been measured. Although using power meter to measure power consumption obtain accurate power consumption, extra cost is incurred. Thus, we propose prediction method about power consumption without power meter. To proving accuracy about proposed method, we perform CPU and Hard disk test on cloud computing environment. During the tests, we obtain both predictive value by proposed method and actual value by power meter, and we calculate error rate. As a result, error rate of predictive value and actual value shows about 4.22% in CPU test and about 8.51% in Hard disk test.

Examining the perception of Iranian organizations on Internet of Things solutions and applications

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to explore the perception of Iranian experts and executive managers of sample organizations on the benefits and barriers of Internet of Things (IoT) solutions implementation. Based on the context of Iran using descriptive analysis. Design/methodology/approach – Based on the review of the related literature and websites, benefits and barriers of successful implementation to IoTs solutions were identified. Through a self-administered questionnaire which was collected from 67 Iranian organizations the ranking and importance of benefits and barriers of IoTs solutions implementation were determined based on the perception of the experts of the surveyed organizations. Findings – Analysis of data and the obtained results reveals that “improved customer experience” and “Supply chain optimization and responsiveness” are the most important benefits that the survey organizations expect to reap as a result of IoTs solutions implementation. Also “Integration challenges” and “cannot find right suppliers” were ranked as the most challenging barriers to IoTs solutions implementation. Research limitations/implications – The findings and conclusions drawn from this research are representative of the Iranian context only. So, caution needs to be exercised in generalizing the results. Practical implications – The top management of Iranian organizations and also, policy makers of the country should be aware that IoTs solutions are being deployed rapidly throughout the globe. Therefore, it is necessary to increase investment in IT infrastructure and also by holding various training for employees and experts of Iranian organizations, and setting various IoT majors in the country’s universities and vocational schools, efforts should be made to accelerate the deployment of IoTs solutions to keep pace with leading companies in the world. Originality/value – As IoTs is rather a new phenomenon in the Iranian industries this study has the potential to enhance the understanding of IoTs solutions and applications, benefits and barriers amongst researches and practitioners in the context of Iran. Also policymakers of the country could take advantage of the findings of this study toward a successful implementation of IoTs solutions and applications.

Solutions for risk data compliance under BCBS 239

Purpose – BCBS 239 sets out a challenging standard for risk data processing and reporting. Any bank striving to comply with the principles will be keen to introspect how risk data is organized and what execution capabilities are at their disposal. With this in mind, the current paper advises banks on the growing number of solutions, tools and techniques that can be used to support risk data management frameworks under BCBS 239. Design/methodology/approach – This paper, based on a survey with 29 major financial institutions, including G-SIBs and D-SIBs from diversified geographical regions such as North America, Europe and APAC, aims to advise banks and other financial services firms on what is needed to become ready and compliant with BCBS 239. This paper discusses best practice solutions for master data management, data lineage and end user implementations. Findings – The primary conclusion of this paper is that banks should not treat BCBS 239 as yet another compliance exercise. The BCBS 239 principles constitute a driving force to restore viability and improve risk governance. In light of the new standards, banks can benefit from making significant progress towards risk data management transformation. This report argues that banks need to invest in a solution that empowers those who use the data to manage risk data. Thus, operational complexities are lifted and no data operations team is needed for proprietary coding of the data. Only then banks will stay abreast of the competition, while becoming fully compliant with the BCBS 239 principles. Practical implications – As noted by Prorokowski (2014), “Increasingly zero accountability, imposed, leveraged omnipresent vast endeavors, yielding ongoing understanding […] of the impact of the global financial crisis on the ways data should be treated” sparked off international debates addressing the need for an effective solution to risk data management and reporting. Originality/value – This paper discusses the forthcoming regulatory change that will have a significant impact on the banking industry. The Basel Committee on Banking Supervision published its Principles for effective risk data aggregation and risk reporting (BCBS239) in January last year. The document contains 11 principles that Global Systemically Important Banks (G-SIBs) will need to comply with by January 2016. The BCBS 239 principles are regarded as the least known components of the new regulatory reforms. As it transpires, the principles require many banks to undertake a significant amount of technical work and investments in IT infrastructure. Furthermore, BCBS 239 urges financial services firms to review their definitions of the completeness of risk data.

Pediatric immunization-related safety incidents in primary care: A mixed methods analysis of a national database

BackgroundChildren are scheduled to receive 18–20 immunizations before their 18th birthday in England and Wales; this approximates to 13 million vaccines administered per annum. Each immunization represents a potential opportunity for immunization-related error and effective immunization is imperative to maintain the public health benefit from immunization. Using data from a national reporting system, this study aimed to characterize pediatric immunization-related safety incident reports from primary care in England and Wales between 2002 and 2013. MethodsA cross-sectional mixed methods study was undertaken. This comprised reading the free-text of incident reports and applying codes to describe incident type, potential contributory factors, harm severity, and incident outcomes. A subsequent thematic analysis was undertaken to interpret the most commonly occurring codes, such as those describing the incident, events leading up to it and reported contributory factors, within the contexts they were described. ResultsWe identified 1745 reports and most (n=1077, 61.7%) described harm outcomes including three deaths, 67 reports of moderate harm and 1007 reports of low harm. Failure of timely vaccination was the potential cause of three child deaths from meningitis and pneumonia, and described in a further 113 reports. Vaccine administration incidents included the wrong number of doses (n=476, 27.3%), wrong timing (n=294, 16.8%), and wrong vaccine (n=249, 14.3%). Documentation failures were frequently implicated. Socially and medically vulnerable children were commonly described. ConclusionThis is the largest examination of reported contributory factors for immunization-related patient safety incidents in children. Our findings suggest investments in IT infrastructure to support data linkage and identification of risk predictors, development of consultation models that promote the role of parents in mitigating safety incidents, and improvement efforts to adapt and adopt best practices from elsewhere, are needed to mitigate future immunization-related patient safety incidents. These priorities are particularly pressing for vulnerable patient groups.

Comparative Study on E-Government Indicators between Romania and the European Union

The development of e-government services increases the performance of the public sector by using ICT to deliver information to citizens, businesses, and public agencies. This article examines the development of e-government in Romania and compares it with the other EU countries. The indicators comparison is based on the seven e-government survey reports performed by the United Nations between 2003 and 2014 on 193 countries. The conceptual framework of the survey expresses a holistic view of the e-government development index (EGDI) and has three main dimensions: online services availability, telecommunication infrastructure, and human resource capacity. The UN global e-government ranking was intended to offer a performance rating of national governments relative to one another. Romania is ranked as a high-EGDI (between 0.5 and 0.75) country in 2014 worldwide with and EGDI value of 0.56315. Otherwise, among the EU countries, Romania is one of the low-ranked countries regarding the e-government development index in all the seven surveys. There are many opportunities for high-EGDI and middle-EGDI countries to continue e-government development. Considering EU strategies, investments in IT infrastructure, in education, and continuous transformation in online public services, there can be a considerable improvement of e-government in Romania and the other EU countries as well.Keywords: E-Government, United Nations, EGDI, Romania, EU1 IntroductionInformation and communications technology is used to deliver information to citizens, businesses, and public agencies because of the continuous development of egovernment services. This results in increasing the efficiency and effectiveness of the public sector and administrative activities [1]; [2]; [3]. E-government helps public administration transform into an instrument of sustainable development [4]. Also, egovernment services increase information and services availability, interactivity and accessibility for citizens and businesses through the advanced use of ICT. Other advantages of using e-services are: less corruption, increased transparency, cost reductions, less bureaucracy [5]; [6].Bureaucracy is a variable that negatively influences the financial structure and the activities of companies [7]. Effective e-government can reduce the level of disappointment triggered by the bureaucracy in public government services use by citizens and companies [3]; [4].This article examines the development of e-government in Romania and compares it with the other EU countries.2 Literature ReviewE-Government in RomaniaIn Romania, before the year 2000, e-government meant no remarkable activity [8]; [9]; [10]; [11]. However, during the last 15 years, there has been a substantial development of e-government services [12]. Since 2000, the progress of e-government projects implementation in Romania can be noticed as a government strategy attempt to make more information and services available on the Internet [12]. The success of this endeavor depends on how the citizens and the business people make use of the available services and information [6].There are five types of e-government use, as follows [1]:· Service use: using transactional services.· General information use: looking up general information.· Policy research: looking up information related to government policies.· Participation: participating in decisionmaking and discussion processes.· Co-creation: co-creating policies, information, and services with government and other citizens.The dominant type of e-government use is the use of transactional services and information [1].In Romania, the infrastructure developed rapidly since 2003 when the e-government portal (www.e-guvernare.ro) was launched. This infrastructure development enabled the government to provide e-government services for citizens as well as for businesses [13]. Egovernment services in Romania are portrayed in Table 1. …

Cost-Benefit Analysis of Datacenter Consolidation Using Virtualization

The objectives of datacenter consolidation are cost reduction and superior services. A datacenter consolidation plan includes minimizing investments in IT infrastructure and buildings and reducing power consumption related to cooling. Such a process requires scalable planning and implementation. Virtualization is the most popular and cost-effective technology for datacenter consolidation. In this article, the author runs a cost-benefit analysis of virtualization and datacenter consolidation using the Global Virtual datacenter online calculator and VMware's ROI CO ((for) return on investment/total cost of ownership) calculator version 3.0.

IaaS cloud optimisation during economic turbulence for Malaysia small and medium enterprise

With today's digital economy, switching ON a cloud computing IaaS is no longer an easy task like an ordinary electricity utility switch. Moving from LAN into the shared cloud services is just the iceberg question of location but the deeper question should be about the product and process of acquiring infrastructure. Previous primary survey has shown that Malaysia SME's over investment in IT infrastructure has crush traditional perception of under resources. This paper uses a Delphi interactive interview correspondence method with Malaysia SME top management to revalidate each other's views. Results show that IaaS model is still in the infancy stage due to shared security concern and immature last mile connectivity. Administrators are still unsure how to determine the measurable organisational value when investing in IaaS. Even the current economic turbulence has lower impact to the decision making for continuous investment in IT infrastructure which is deemed to contribute in longer years. The optimisation framework will guide investment decision on IaaS to enhance SME competitiveness during an economic turbulence.

Meru Cabs: past perfect and future tense

Subject area Business/technology strategy. The purpose of the case is to enable the students to understand the following: how technology implementation can change the face of business like cab service? How information technology deployment can influence competition? How investment in company's IT infrastructure affects the bottom line? Study level/applicability The case can be discussed at Master of Business Administration (MBA)/Post Graduate Diploma in Business Administration (PGDBA) level students as well as executive education program. It is aimed at graduate level and postgraduate level management courses such as management information systems, strategic information systems, and technology management. Case overview Meru Cabs, started in April 2007 at Mumbai, was one of the firsts to provide “radio taxi” service in India. Meru Cabs delivers a reliable taxi service by concentrating on three C's, namely customer, call centre and chauffeur. Much of its growth can be attributed to successful deployment of the technology. This case presents the growth of Meru Cabs and how it has differentiated itself by utilizing the technology to attain market leader position in the four cities – Mumbai, Delhi, Hyderabad and Bangalore, where it operates. Also the case discusses about the future of cab service in general and what it has in store for Meru Cabs. With the flurry of cabs service coming up in every city and the competition getting intense, the case put forth the opportunities and challenges existing for cab companies in general and Meru Cabs in particular. Expected learning outcomes To enable the students to understand that technology is a strategic tool: to enhance customer relationship, to manage business operations, to achieve sustained competitive advantage and that forms an integral part of company's growth and/or expansion strategy. Supplementary materials Teaching notes are available for educators only. Please contact your library to gain login details or email support@emeraldinsight.com to request teaching notes.

Public Verifiability in Cloud Computing Using Signcryption Based on Elliptic Curves

Cloud computing is a computing paradigm that involves outsourcing of computing resources with the capabilities of expendable resource scalability, on-demand provisioning with little or no up-front IT infrastructure investment costs. It has recently emerged as a promising hosting platform that performs an intelligent usage of a collection of services, applications, information and infrastructure comprised of pools of computer, network, information and storage resources. However along with these advantages, storing a large amount of data including critical information on the cloud motivates highly skilled hackers thus creating a need for the security to be considered as one of the top issues while considering Cloud Computing. In the cloud storage model, data is stored on multiple virtualized servers. Physically the resources will span multiple servers and can even span storage sites. We have proposed an effective scheme to ensure the correctness of user's data on cloud data storage and public verifiability without demanding user's time, feasibility or resources. Whenever data corruption is detected during the storage correctness verification, this scheme can almost guarantee the simultaneous localization of data errors and the identification of the misbehaving server(s). Keywords - Elliptic Curves, Homomorphic, Signcryption, Unsigncryption.

The impact of business process reengineering on the management of customer services: an empirical study among Nigerian banks

Business process reengineering (BPR) is a fundamental rethinking and radical redesign of business processes to achieve dramatic improvements in critical contemporary measures of performance such as cost, quality, speed and services (Al-Mashari and Zairi, 1999). However, the importance of BPR as a strategic management technique for managing customer services in the Nigerian banking industry can never be overemphasised. This paper investigates the effectiveness of the critical success factors (CSFs) of BPR on customer services (CS) in the Nigerian banking industry. The empirical study was conducted via the administration of 2,280 self-administered questionnaires to a randomly selected junior and senior staff of six, out of the 22 reengineered banks, post – 2004 consolidation exercise of the Central Bank of Nigeria. Using the framework from Khong and Richardson (2003), factors manifesting customer services were regressed on the CSFs, manifesting successful BPR. Findings based on the survey revealed that successful BPR can positively affect CS in Nigerian banks. Hence, successful BPR effort requires effective communication, commitment and support from the top management, appropriate job descriptions and allocation of responsibilities, recruitment of experienced consultants and adequate investment in IT infrastructure.

Cloud computing: The new IT paradigm

Cloud computing is becoming the new IT paradigm. After 50 years of development, the original idea of McCarthy to deliver information technology and applications as a public service comes to life. The secret sauce of this new development is a combination of commodity components (standardized and cheap), ubiquitous Internet connectivity, and virtualization technology of computing resources. After a few years of discussion and sometimes even disputes there is finally a solid and accepted definition of what cloud computing really is. But that's not all. Cloud offerings mushroom these days: from big global offering (Amazon, Google, IBM, and Microsoft) to very small, focused, and highly customized solutions. Economics of the cloud are promising, in particular for small and medium businesses, and public sector. Cloud solutions enable elimination of investment costs (no upfront investments in IT infrastructure and software licenses) and significant reduction of operating expenses (50% or even more). Some special solutions, like disaster recovery in the cloud, are for the first time viable for all enterprises. Economics of the cloud come from aggregation and sharing of common infrastructure as is the case for all public services: power distribution, public transportation, telephone services. In this article, we present a underlying concept of the first cloud offering on Serbian and regional market provided through Coming - Computer Engineering and Telekom Serbia partnership. Key differentiator in comparison to global offerings is a full customization of solution to meet user's expectations and a solid support that goes as far as full outsourcing of IT operations to provider (i.e. Coming CE). Also, we are willing to spark discussion about community cloud solutions that can serve many institutions otherwise unable to build their own IT services. We point directly at: local (community) authorities, schools and universities, public administrative services, to name just a few. Also, we invite academic community to critically assess how reality of the cloud lives up to promises made by service providers.

The Stability of Offshore Outsourcing Relationships

Offshore outsourcing of administrative and technical services has become a mainstream business practice. Increasing commoditization of business services and growing client experience with outsourcing have created a range of competitive service delivery options for client firms. Yet, data from the Offshoring Research Network (ORN) suggests that, despite increasing market options and growing client quality and cost efficiency expectations, clients typically renew provider contracts and develop longer-term relationships with providers. Based on ORN data, this paper explores drivers of this phenomenon. The findings suggest that providers promote contract renewal by making client specific investments in software, IT infrastructure and training, and by involving clients in outsourcing operations, thereby increasing relation specific joint equity and creating opportunities for client monitoring and control. Interestingly, these strategies apply to routine rather than knowledge-intensive tasks, and are more likely to be applied by large rather than small providers. Surprisingly, high degree of contract specification makes contract renewal less likely. The paper contributes to the growing literature on strategic outsourcing of business services and the importance of governance mechanisms addressing ‘hidden costs’ as well as ‘hidden benefits’ of offshore outsourcing relationships.

Improvement of Learning and Teaching Efficiency by Web-Associated Seminars

We face the situation that the number of medical students is increasing annually, without an appropriate adaptation of human resources for teaching. The aim was to tackle that situation by conceptual changes that sustain or even improve the educational level and the professional quality. Taking advantage of recent investments in the faculties IT-infrastructure we designed a web-associated teaching concept that combines the transfer of biological knowledge and the operation of web-associated design (TYPO 3). Small groups of students (n≤10) design a web-page under a given topic in a problem oriented manner. Each student has to evaluate/provide feedback to a given number of web-pages designed by other student-groups. Such the students can gain knowledge by “e-learning” and can based on the feed back consecutively improve their own presentation. With this procedure we intend to cultivate self-contained learning and working in general. The web-pages become recourses of knowledge for the students during their preparations for the examinations and during their further studies. We expect this resources to grow over the next few years becoming a general compendium. We can provide students evaluation of the seminars, but will not (yet) have results in terms of success rate in examinations compared to conventional presentation based seminars as performed in previous years.

Experience with on-demand physics simulations on the Sun Microsystems computing facility (SunGrid) at network.com

The simulation program of the STAR experiment at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (Brookhaven National Laboratory) is growing in scope and its responsiveness to the needs of the research community. In addition, there is a significant ongoing R&D activity focused on future upgrades of the STAR detector, which also requires extensive simulations support. In addition to the local computing facility, the Open Science Grid (OSG) resources have been successfully used in STAR. However, the explosive growth of both computational needs and the available computing power, combined with distributed nature of the latter, dictate that all available options are considered - from open source to commercial grids. The computing facility of Sun Microsystems (the SunGrid) aims to deliver enterprise computing power and resources over the Internet, enabling developers, researchers, scientists and businesses to optimize performance and speed time to results without investment in IT infrastructure.

Innovations Online

The increased availability of information in electronic format, including electronic books, is set to be one of the benefits of the National electronic Library for Health (NeLH), and a previous article in the Innovations Online series described how WaX technology has been used for this purpose in a particular instance.1 However, in translating documents from print to electronic formats, several issues arise. The article that follows, by Dr Claire O’Brien from the Centre for Clinical Informatics, Cambridge, suggests one possible model for change, which would allow information providers to achieve such a transformation to optimal effect. In particular, the suggested model addresses the ‘people issues’ and proposes adaptation of roles and work processes. The author refers to her experience in the WaX project and elsewhere when she predicts that the successful introduction of resources such as WaX books to the NeLH will require a system-wide culture shift and significant investment of time and resources. Along with investment in IT infrastructure, for example, Dr O’Brien highlights the importance of providing appropriate training of the staff involved in maintaining and developing the information. The author concludes that the NeLH will need to provide direct and customized support to information providers, if it is to succeed in attracting a comprehensive range of key resources in a sustained fashion.

The role of health science librarians in preparing tomorrow’s doctors to manage information

By the year 2000, all UK medical schools will have implemented a new curriculum with explicit aims and learning objectives, new assessment methods, new forms of delivering the curriculum and new approaches to teaching and learning. In parallel with these changes aimed at producing more independent, life-long learners, there has been major investment in IT infrastructure to support new methods of teaching and learning. Developments in the National Health Service (NHS) have created additional reasons for rethinking and reforming medical education. From the point of view of those responsible for health informatics programmes, the 1990 and 1998 NHS information strategies have provided a vision as to how information can contribute to better patient care and a more effective health service. To achieve the outcomes specified in Information for Health educational providers must examine the opportunities and incentives students have to develop knowledge, skills and positive attitudes in relation to the information component of their profession. It was against this backdrop of change that the Council of Heads of Medical Schools, in consultation with the Education and Training Programme in IM&T, commissioned a survey of informatics teaching in UK medical schools to provide evidence as to what medical schools are doing to implement the GMC recommendations in the area of health informatics. The purpose of the survey was to provide baseline data as to what medical schools are doing to prepare students to collect, share and use information, for research, education and patient care. The expectation was that these findings could be used in the future to monitor the impact of the new medical curricula on the teaching of informatics skills. This article reports on results relating to the role of health science librarians in preparing future doctors to manage information.