IT Vendors Research Articles

Applying the concepts of simplicity and discipline for creating customers' value in a low contact services company: an exploratory study

Purpose – The research aims to find and highlight the process, procedures, and practices at AirAsia that deem to fit the characteristics of simplicity and discipline in the original model for creating value in the forms of lower operations costs, which ultimately translates into lower ticket price for Airasia's customers. Design/methodology/approach – A case study method is used in this study. It is appropriate as; the model has not been applied to a service organization. In exploring the concept of simplicity and discipline and how they create values, at a set of the best practices and procedures utilized by AirAsia are being scrutinized. Four employees at the executive and managerial level were interviewed. The author spent approximately two hours with the senior manager of Network Management Centre as all operations fall under his jurisdiction. Besides him, this study also took information from a technical service manager and two executives. The information collected from the staff is complementary to each other, ensuring the internal validity of the method. The secondary information was taken primarily from AirAsia's website: AirAsia.com. Findings – It is suggested that excellent practices and procedures done at Airasia characterize both concepts of simplicity and discipline, which in return help AsiaAsia in creating value for its customers. For example, the company decision to use one type of aircraft ensures its easy maintenance and training of staffs. The use of IT at the company helps the company plan the unplanned changes. The clever use of IT has enabled the control filter, as specified by Correa and Gianesi to function properly. It simplifies the booking, sales and checking-in procedures. Furthermore, the company has locked a partnership with its IT vendors for mutual benefits where AirAsia can constantly improve their system while the IT vendor learns to create innovative products according to customer requirements. Research limitations/implications – The result does not indicate that that Airasia's operational success is due to these concepts. Rather this article suggests that the concepts of simplicity and discipline, as proven to be successfully applied to manufacturing sector, could also be potentially applied to service organizations to helps firms create value, in this company in the form of low price ticket for affordable travel. Practical implications – Managers in a similar service industry could use the principles and practices proposed to potentially enhance its operations flexibility. Originality/value – This research is important as for one to understand the main topics of operations flexibility in services sector.

A Research on KVM I/O Performance

With open source, stable performance, simple structure, integrated in Linux kernel, and good performance, KVM (Kernel-based Virtual Machine) gets wide attention from major IT vendors and academia circles. However, virtualization technology will introduce additional overhead, especially in the I/O virtualization. The current researches about KVM have been carried out mostly focused on the performance comparison and analysis between virtualization solutions. There is no systematic study of the KVM I/O performance. In this paper, the I/O architecture in KVM is firstly studied, and then the disk and network performance of fully virtualization KVM and Para-virtualization KVM with all the different configurations are systemically tested and analyzed. Both the KVM I/O performance and the influences of the different configuration options on the performance are figured out in this paper. These are quite important and useful for the users and designers.

Deep sentiment analysis: Mining the causality between personality-value-attitude for analyzing business ads in social media

IT vendors routinely use social media such as YouTube not only to disseminate their IT product information, but also to acquire customer input efficiently as part of their market research strategies. Customer responses that appear in social media, however, are typically unstructured; thus, a fairly large data set is needed for meaningful analysis. Although identifying customers’ value structures and attitudes may be useful for developing targeted or niche markets, the unstructured and volume-heavy nature of customer data prohibits efficient and economical extraction of such information. Automatic extraction of customer information would be valuable in determining value structure and strength. This paper proposes an intelligent method of estimating causality between user profiles, value structures, and attitudes based on the replies and published content managed by open social network systems such as YouTube. To show the feasibility of the idea proposed in this paper, information richness and agility are used as underlying concepts to create performance measures based on media/information richness theory. The resulting deep sentiment analysis proves to be superior to legacy sentiment analysis tools for estimation of causality among the focal parameters.

Enhanced Role based Access Control: Integrating Auditing and Authentication

In past decade lot of research has been done in RBAC (Role Based Access Control) technology. The industries have also shown great interest in RBAC. Most of the IT vendors are offering products that incorporate some form of RBAC. Today, all major DBMS products support RBAC. RBAC provides easier management of permissions in an organization and hence is most widely used model to control access of legitimate users. However research shows that access control is not a complete solution for securing a database. Most of the breaches are done by insiders. So, access control system must be incorporated with other mechanisms that provide more features than just controlling access of users. Auditing is such a mechanism that can log all the transactions occurring on the database and based on this log an analysis can be done. Auditing is well effective when we have good authentication. Authentication processes are vulnerable to SQL Injection attacks. This paper proposes an enhanced model that increases the capability of RBAC model by integrating Auditing and Authentication in simplest ways. In this way this model not only provides the features of RBAC but also handles common issues of database security.

빅 데이터를 이용한 소셜 미디어 분석 기법의 활용

The analysis method using Big Data has evolved based on the Big data Management Technology. There are quite a few researching institutions anticipating new era in data analysis using Big Data and IT vendors has been sided with them launching standardized technologies for Big Data management technologies. Big Data is also affected by improvements of IT gadgets IT environment. Foreran by social media, analyzing method of unstructured data is being developed focusing on diversity of analyzing method, anticipation and optimization. In the past, data analyzing methods were confined to the optimization of structured data through data mining, OLAP, statics analysis. This data analysis was solely used for decision making for Chief Officers. In the new era of data analysis, however, are evolutions in various aspects of technologies; the diversity in analyzing method using new paradigm and the new data analysis experts and so forth. In addition, new patterns of data analysis will be found with the development of high performance computing environment and Big Data management techniques. Accordingly, this paper is dedicated to define the possible analyzing method of social media using Big Data. this paper is proposed practical use analysis for social media analysis through data mining analysis methodology.

Study on Cloud Computing Resource Allocation Strategies

Cloud computing is offering utility-oriented IT services to users worldwide. Based on pay-as-you-go model, it enables hosting of pervasive applications from consumer, scientific, and business domains. It is a revolution of traditional data centre's and offers subscription-based access to infrastructure, platforms, and applications that are popularly referred to as Infrastructure, Platform and Software as a Service. Numerous IT vendors are promising to offer computation, storage, and application hosting services and to provide coverage in several continents. These vendors required a huge amount of energy for contributing to high dynamic cost along with a drawback of environment pollution. Therefore, current scenario needs Green computing to save energy and reduce dynamic costs too. Because of increasing demand of high speed computation and data storages, distributed computing system has beckon a lot of contemplation. Resource allocation plays an indispensable role in distributed system where clients have service level agreements. Due to these IT Vendors total profit depends on these Service level agreements.

The differences in structural relationships among software engineering capabilities and business performance depending on origin of IT firm in Japan

To clarify the mechanism of how software engineering capabilities relate to business performance of IT vendors, we analysed data collected from 100 major IT vendors. Then, we verified the relationships among software engineering capabilities and business performance vary significantly depending on origin of vendor: maker-turned, user-turned or independent. In maker-turned vendors, service, process, and product innovations are effectively connected. In user-turned vendors, software engineering innovation is probably attributable to a management policy of paying extra attention to business performance. In independent vendors, human resource development is the only factor that positively and significantly influences the other capabilities and business performance.

A Strategy to Move Taiwan's IT Industry From Commodity Hardware Manufacturing to Competitive Cloud Solutions

Taiwan has been a worldwide leader in computer hardware manufacturing for many years. Cloud computing, a major paradigm shift for the IT industry, threatens that leadership position. Cloud computing drives the value chain increasingly toward systems software and services. It has a major negative impact on the already marginal profit picture that threatens Taiwan's hardware manufacturing industry, and the Taiwan economy as a whole. The Institute for Information Industry (III) has devised a strategy and technology called cloud appliances for enterprises (CAFE) to address the effects of this technology shift. CAFE is a major initiative to help traditional Taiwanese OEM/ODM vendors transform themselves from primarily being commodity hardware providers into highly profitable, full-function cloud systems business that can reach worldwide markets. The III develops key system software components (CAFE technology components) that can be integrated with partners' hardware and other technology to create appliances that deliver cloud infrastructure and services enabling enterprises to establish private clouds (thus the name CAFE). Appliances that offer user-ready services and applications, provide significantly higher value to customers, support higher prices than hardware alone, and thereby increase the profit margin of Taiwanese IT vendors. Key Taiwan hardware vendors that have already adapted the CAFE strategy include ASUS, Delta Electronics, GIGABYTE, In Win, and Promise Technology. They are developing, integrating, and shipping cloud appliances that incorporate CAFE technology components, as well as their own technology. The CAFE strategy has turned the cloud computing challenge into a golden opportunity, moving the IT industry of Taiwan toward the next horizon. Video-Summary and Testimonials http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p4jqeuAwF00&feature=youtu.be.

Governing and Managing IT Investment and Spending, Managing System Implementation and Managing Vendors and Service Providers

In today’s business environment of online transactions and remote delivery of services across multiple time zones and countries that lead to reduced cost and increased efficiencies, IT investments have become the key to sustaining such competitive advantages. The percentage of budgets spent on IT is ever increasing. This paper discusses the IT investment methodology and the related aspects to be considered. The IT investment is also viewed using the financial metrics like ROI, to justify the investments. Most businesses use the ROI measure before finalizing an IT investment. One of the ways IT investments costs are reduced is by using external vendors who are specialized in the specific systems. IT vendor management thus is an area that Businesses need to be handling every day. A proper IT vendor management process needs to be in place to effectively manage IT investments. Some of the IT vendor management aspects have been reviewed in this paper. With IT investments comes changes to the way business is conducted and thus such changes carry risks. Using proper IT implementation strategies, such risks can be mitigated. This paper reviews the Project Management Institute’s approach to IT investment. Investment in IT typically leads to implementing or upgrading systems. Proper processes need to be in place to take care of such investments by adopting IT governance strategies. Without good IT governance strategies, over the long run, the IT investments and processes implemented would diverge from the Business Objectives to be met. This paper would covers the IT governance aspects to highlight this important area.

TEMPEST: An integrative model for health technology assessment

This paper responds to calls for a national forum to track enabling (current) and emerging (future) technologies in healthcare. An integrative model for health technology assessment is developed from prior empirical research, secondary source material and peer review on a range of healthcare technologies: information and communications technology; medical devices, imaging/monitoring technology; personalised medicines; drug discovery and diagnostics. The TEMPEST model is an acronym for technology, economic, market, political, evaluation, social and transformation. These themes are sub-divided into focal areas, where quantitative indicators/metrics are used for comparative analysis. The model provides a conceptual and analytical tool for policy-makers, healthcare professionals IT vendors, citizens and other stakeholders for understanding and evaluating the scale and scope of health technology adoption and implementation at national, regional and local levels.

Seniors and Information Technology: A MIS-Fit?

INTRODUCTION The elderly continue to remain on the edge of the divide. This separation is well known and is split among many different lines including wealth, education, ethnicity, and age, among others (e.g., gender, country of residence, state of residence, broadband access, etc.). While there has been progress made in shrinking these partitions, many feel there is much more to be done. Our particular interest is in the use of IT by senior citizens, as they comprise one of the fastest-growing segments of society, both in the USA and internationally. Furthermore, this group has significant disposable income (compared to younger generations), available to spend on IT and its related products. Issues such as social interaction, government services, e-commerce activities, healthcare, and education can be enhanced through increased computer usage by our senior citizens. However, the topic in general has been largely ignored in the traditional MIS research realm. A perusal of the top IS journals in the field, over the past five years, shows that scant attention has been paid to this subject. It begs the question of whether we in MIS should care about this group. This paper investigates the current state of IT use by the elderly and reports on what has been done, and remains to be done, to integrate this group of users into the mainstream of modern digital society. BACKGROUND AND IMPETUS FOR THE STUDY There have been few previous studies in the MIS literature, especially in the top-tier journals, pertaining to IT and senior citizens. McMurtrey, McGaughey, and Downey (2008, 2009) lamented the lack of effort among IT vendors in addressing the particular, specific needs of the elderly when it comes to using computers and related peripheral devices. These authors posit that vendors of IT products are perhaps missing out on a goldmine of opportunity. As shown in Figure 1, the median net worth of individuals aged 65 to 69 is higher than any other age group represented (U.S. Census Bureau, 2008). A closer inspection shows that, starting with the 55 64 set, each successive collection of older citizens has much more net worth than their younger counterparts. Therefore, from a financial standpoint, seniors have more to spend on IT and its related wares than other groups. This situation motivated the studies by McMurtrey et al. (2008; 2009). [FIGURE 1 OMITTED] Furthermore, population projections (Figure 2) show that the number of seniors (age 65 and over) will double from the year 2000 to 2030, according to the most recent data available (U.S. Census Bureau, 2005a). It is apparent that, at least in terms of raw numbers, the elderly in the future will be out in large force and have a lot of money to spend. [FIGURE 2 OMITTED] Thus it does seem contrary to conventional wisdom that research studies involving the elderly and IT are conspicuously absent from the mainstream MIS literature, at least in the top-tier journals. Management Information Systems, as a field of study, has components in a wide variety of areas including end-user computing, systems analysis and design, the use of database and telecommunication technologies, etc. MIS is related to the business uses of information technology and, at least tangentially, to the use of such tools and techniques in order to make a profit. This latter point drives home why the current study finds the issue of seniors and IT so perplexing: seniors are large in number and have significant money to spend. It would seem that IT vendors would take notice--not to mention MIS researchers and the journals in which they publish. To demonstrate the lack of attention by the top-tier journals in MIS to this topic, we examined the back issues of six top journals in our field and counted how many articles were devoted to the subject. While it is debatable as what outlets would constitute the top six, we utilized existing rankings from the literature (c. …

Co-evolution of Supply Chain Strategies and Technologies

This paper proposes a framework that seeks to denote the relationship and promote a better alignment between the evolution of supply chain strategies and technologies. In the supply chain strategy, the focal shift in strategy has been from lean supply chain to a combination of lean and agile supply chain, whereas in supply chain technology the focal shift has been from individual and dyadic to global, inter-organisational systems. Examples of these systems include Vendor-Managed Inventory and Web-based Electronic Data Interchange. These systems increase visibility of information within the supply network and require a high level of trust between the trading partners. Since most inter-organisational systems are developed by IT vendors, the concepts of visibility and trust must be understood by these vendors and translated into the systems they develop. The proposed framework emphasizes the focus on fit and alignment between progress in supply chain strategies and IT strategies that would potentially enable agility as well as trust and visibility within the supply network.

Greenwashing of it brands: A comparative study

This paper attempts to uncover the reasons behind discrepancies between the perceived “greenness” of an IT brand and an objective evaluation of the company’s sustainability practices through a study of corporate websites as brand positioning tools. Different elements of corporate branding strategy are examined, and areas for further research are suggested. An analysis of the corporate websites of six IT vendors (HP, Dell, Apple, Microsoft, Nokia and Samsung) is conducted to collect data along two dimensions: functional attributes and emotional benefits of their sustainability efforts. For functional attributes, data on product strategies, corporate social responsibility programs and environmental responsibility efforts are collected. For emotional attributes, the existence of any emotional appeal in the corporate websites is documented and categorized. The data is then compared with the results from the Greenfactor study and the Greenpeace score card to identify similarities and differences between perception and substance, such that two categories of green brands can be identified: high perception, low substance and low perception, high substance. First, corporate websites of all studied companies are similar in terms of content and design, indicating websites are not a differentiating factor. Second, IT company websites appeal to the functional dimension of green brand positioning strategies more so than emotional dimension. Third, IT companies are mindful of accusations of greenwashing and are careful about environmental claims. The green branding strategies of the major IT firms are similar in nature and so building a distinctive, consistent and “strong” brand in this context becomes a challenge. Some companies are breaking away by actively seeking new ways to position themselves as pioneers of environmentally responsibility. Dell’s ban on e-waste export, for example, is a step in this direction, and Apple’s communication strategy tends to stress its leadership role in sustainable practices.

Exploring the Role of Knowledge Networks in Perceived e-Government

What are the knowledge network configurations associated with effective e-government? To answer this question, a social network perspective is applied to explore the connection between e-government actors’ social networks and their perception of e-government effectiveness. Specifically, this study closely looks at both intraorganizational networks between program and IT units and interorganizational relationships with IT vendors in the context of local e-government. Two Korean local governments who provide online parking services through the same IT vendor were selected as comparative cases. Through the network analysis of two local governments, the study suggests preliminary findings for the knowledge network conditions for effective e-government: e-government effectiveness is likely to be enhanced (1) members of IT and program units are linked through a greater number of strong cross-unit ties; (2) they maintain strong ties with IT vendors; (3) CUBS take central positions in knowledge networks in a program unit; and (4) they are embedded in high density of intra-unit networks within their units.

Managing Security Risks With 80001

Healthcare delivery organizations (HDOs, or hospitals) will soon begin to use IEC 800011:2010 to assist them in managing risks associated with medical IT networks—IT networks in their facilities that incorporate medical devices. Recent attention has been given to the dangers of and poor outcomes occasionally experienced when in-hospital interconnection of medical devices is performed without due care. Cooper and Eagles related how the new standard will help to provide safer, more effective, and more secure operation of a medical IT network. Of course, the problems of incorporating a medical device onto an IT network are not confined to hospitals. With the global movement toward electronic medical records, it is likely that soon even the single practitioner may have a fairly sophisticated network as an integral part of the practice’s infrastructure. It will be unlikely that the smaller practices will have the resources to maintain an aggressive cybervigilance stance and might be grateful for much of the complexity associated with the incorporation of medical devices into their infrastructure to be managed by a transparent, open process. One of the first challenges in managing risk is assembling information essential to the initial assessment of risk. For medical devices, this effort involves obtaining documentation and understanding of the device’s intended use, instructions for use, security disclosures, and any other safety or effectiveness disclosures that might be possible. Similar documents must be obtained or created for the target IT network where the information sources may be internal or from both internal service providers and from IT vendors. This paper discusses the nature and use of security risk disclosures under IEC 80001-1 with an emphasis on the use of common terminology to group together and discuss the security capabilities and/or requirements for medical devices that are risk managed during the entire life cycle of connection to the medical IT network. It does not assume nor promote any particular security controls framework for the HDO or medical device manufacturer (MDM). Instead, it simply outlines a grouping of security capabilities of the medical device that are relevant to securing the IT network connected device throughout its life cycle. The article is an overview of an upcoming Technical Report from the IEC (publication likely in late 2011) and provides some information that may change before the release of the final report. However, we hope it provides an overview for HDOs, both big and small, to start to think about organizing their IT network risk management activities to include security Managing Security Risks With 80001

Information Security Risks in Enabling e-Government: The Impact of IT Vendors

The purpose of this article is to identify information systems security risks in local governments resulting from the cooperation with IT vendors. We focus on government-to-government projects where the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of information is a key concern. In our risk identification process, we take a systems thinking approach, taking into account actual and perceived risks. We identified 13 causes of risk in three risk areas and analyzed them using outsourcing literature.

A Study on Relationships Among Software Engineering Capabilities in Japan Using Panel Analysis

To understand how software engineering capabilities relate to IT vendors’ business performance and business environment, the author designed social research on software engineering excellence (SEE) and administered it in 2005, 2006 and 2007 with the Japanese Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry. The author measured the SEE survey results with regard to seven factors including service science characteristics: deliverables, project management, quality assurance, process improvement, research and development, human development, and contact with customers. This paper integrates 233 responses to the SEE surveys into a new database and identified 151 unique IT firms. Based on the results of the panel analysis, most SEE factors for a year had significant positive influences on the same factors the next year. Three paths existed to improving the level of deliverables through project management, quality assurance and research and development. Some SEE factors had significant positive influence on different factors in the following year diagonally. Some negative paths existed, implying that effort put toward a particular factor did not pay off during the research. These efforts may have longer-term effects on other SEE factors. In comparison to the overall structure, stratified analysis on the relationships among the seven factors suggested that year-to-year relationships of the independent vendors tend to be strengthened due to enhancement of series correlation.

Offshore Vendors’ Software Development Team Configurations

This research uses configuration theory and data collected from a major IT vendor organization to examine primary configurations of distributed teams in a global off-shoring context. The study indicates that off-shoring vendor organizations typically deploy three different types of configurations, which the authors term as thin-at-client, thick-at-client, and hybrid. These configurations differ in terms of the size of the sub-teams in the different distributed locations and the nature of the ISD-related tasks performed by the distributed team members. In addition, the different configurations were compared on their inherent process-related and resource-related flexibilities. The thick-at-client configuration emerged as the one that offers superior flexibility (in all dimensions).However, additional analysis also revealed contingencies apart from flexibility that may influence the appropriateness of the distributed ISD team configuration, including the volatility of the client organization’s environment and the extent to which the ISD tasks can be effortlessly moved to the vendor’s home location.

The Influence of Organisational Size, Internal IT Capabilities, and Competitive and Vendor Pressures on ERP Adoption in SMEs

This empirical study investigates the influence of organisational size, internal IT capabilities and external factors, such as competitive and vendor pressure, on ERP adoption within SMEs. Existing research on ERP adoption has indentified some of the potential factors affecting SMEs, such as organisation size as one of the most significant ones. Yet none of this previous research has looked at organisational size, internal IT capabilities and external pressures in a unified framework and in context to SMEs. More specifically, this study focuses on the direct and moderating relationships which may affect an SME’s decision to adopt an ERP system. An analysis of a sample of 229 SMEs shows clear direct and moderating relationships amongst the above factors. Concrete recommendations are provided to accelerate the rate and success level of ERP adoption within SMEs.

IT거버넌스 실행요인과 정보시스템(IS) 효과성, 그리고 전략적 연계의 조절효과

IT governance is an integral part of enterprise governance and consists of the leadership, organizational structures, and processes that ensure organization's IT decision making for achieving organizational goal. Most firms have failed to resolve the balance in building IT governance. The challenge is to align IT strategy with business strategy in establishing and implementing effective IT governance. The purpose of this study is to find out the relationship between IT governance implementation factors and IS effectiveness, and the moderating effect of strategic alignment of IS strategy with business strategy on IS effectiveness. IT governance implementation factors consist of IT vendor management, IT human resource management, and IT infrastructure. Strategic alignment was measured as the alignment between business strategic orientation and IS strategic orientation that used in the research of Chan et al.(1997). In the relationship between three IT governance implementation factors and IS effectiveness, the results of multiple regression analyses showed that IT human resource management is an important determinant to influence IS effectiveness. The additional analysis using multiple regression showed that strategic alignment of IS strategy with business strategy has moderated the relationship between IT governance implementation factors and IS effectiveness.