Interoperability and portability of cloud service enablers in a PaaS environment

Nowadays, the competition in the telecommunications market is exciting and new entities with value-added services have emerged over the core network of Telecommunications operators (Telcos). These new participants have taken out the operators’ relevance since they are entirely agnostic from infrastructure service connectivity. Therefore Telcos, like Portugal Telecom Inovação (PTIN), need to focus on the provision of services to a user’s point of view to not become just a dumb-pipe between the consumers and Cloud service providers. This paper proposes a definition of a distributed architecture that allows developers to create and expose services through a Service Delivery Platform (SDP). The benefit of such Cloud-enabled SDP architecture is the portability of service enablers between Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) providers through a standardized API. Service developers may thus select the more suitable PaaS offering in order to build on-top applications, based on the performance required by a service. An example of applications which can take advantage from more versatile Cloud platforms, is the delivery of mobile context-aware services that react to both environment and user conditions selecting the right type of content (e.g. photos, videos, etc.) to deliver.(undefined

Measuring internationalisation in the mobile telecommunications industry

The telecommunications industry is often described as being a global industry. However, the fact that it exists throughout the globe does not necessarily imply that its constituent companies are individually global in their operations. So far, little interest has been expressed in determining whether they are or are not in practice, but to do so requires that one first determine how this is to be measured. This article focuses on the measurement of internationalisation within the mobile telecommunications industry where the phenomenon can be most clearly identified. Drawing on the literature, four dimensions of internationalisation are initially identified and a database is constructed for the year ending 31 December 2005 that provides hard evidence in relation to these dimensions. Analysis of the results reveals that just a handful of the companies in the sample can be considered to be meaningfully international when all four criteria are taken into account, and that Vodafone among them is best placed to describe itself as a global mobile operator although there are too many reservations for the term global to be seen as an appropriate label. The results highlight the complexity of internationalisation, with operators tending to do well on some of the criteria but not on others, and the paper illustrates how data availability influences the choice of criteria. Data availability also necessitates a trade-off between sample comprehensiveness and detail

A Tale of Two Markets: How Lower-end Borrowers Are Punished for Bank Regulatory Failures in Nigeria

In 2009, the Nigerian banking system witnessed a financial crisis caused by elite borrowers in the financial market. Regulatory response to the Nigerian crisis closely mirrored the international response with increased capital and liquidity thresholds for commercial banks. While the rise of consumer protection on the agenda of prudential supervisors internationally was logical in that consumer debt was the main cause of the global recession, the Nigerian banking reforms of 2009 disproportionately affected access by poorer consumers, who ironically had little to do with the underlying causes of the crisis. As lending criteria become more stringent, poorer consumers of credit products are pushed into informal markets because of liquidity-induced credit rationing. Overall, consumer protection is compromised because stronger consumer protection rules for the formal sector benefits borrowers from formal institutions who constitute the minority of borrowers in all markets. While the passage of regulation establishing credit bureaux and the National Collateral Registry will, in theory, ease access to credit especially by lower-end borrowers, the vast size of the informal market continues to compound the information asymmetry problem, fiscal policies to tackle structural economic issues such as unemployment and illiteracy remain to be initiated, and bank regulators continue to pander to elite customers with policy responses that endorse too big to fail but deems lower-end consumers too irrelevant to save. The essay concluded that addressing the wide disparity in access to credit between the rich and poor through property rights reforms to capture the capital of the informal class, promoting regulation to check loan concentration, and stimulating competition by allowing Telecommunication Companies (TELCOs) and fintech companies to carry on lending activities because of their superior knowledge of lower-end markets will facilitate greater access. The risk of systemic failure deriving from consumer credit in Nigeria is insignificant compared to the consumer vulnerabilities resulting from the exposure of consumers to unregulated products in the informal market

Mobile money

The surge in access to mobile phones throughout the developing world has brought with it a wide range of benefits. One of the most noteworthy breakthroughs has been mobile money, enabling users to deposit, transfer, and withdraw funds from a digital account without owning a bank account Mobile money provides a dramatic reduction in transaction costs, as well as improvements in convenience, security, and time taken for the transaction. There is a growing literature that documents the benefits of mobile money, including improvements in the ability to smooth consumption better in the face of health and economic shocks, improving women’s empowerment, and reducing poverty. More recently, there has been a growth in digital financial services that use mobile money as the rails to deliver other products (largely credit). However, such innovations are few and far between with more research needed on their deployment and impact.otherpublishe

Testing a framework to co-construct social innovation actions: Insights from seven marginalized rural areas

open10siThis project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme under Grant Agreement No. 677622 [SIMRA, Social Innovation in Marginalised Rural Areas]Innovation actions within European Horizon 2020 (H2020) projects aim at testing research results in practice. When supporting social innovations in rural areas, such testing requires the alignment of several rural actors in order to entail behavioral changes beyond the individual level. Recently, social innovation has been recognized as an important tool for rural areas, developing new solutions to respond to wicked problems for improving local living conditions at the grassroots level. In this study, we analyzed the use of an operational framework to support the early governance of social innovation actions. This framework was applied to co-construct seven innovation actions across Europe and the Mediterranean basin applied to forestry, agriculture, and rural development. Our results showed that supporting social innovators and local actors at the early stage of social innovation processes is key for efficiently addressing and tackling challenges and opportunities. Additionally, we showed that the process of defining a social innovation is complex and requires recursive engagement, which might lead to evolution through time, especially in the first phases of the process. Lastly, conducting the feasibility assessment enabled strategic thinking on crucial dimensions for designing a promising social innovation action, such as social networks management, financial sustainability, and know-how. Such findings helped us to draw general lessons for the development and governance of social innovation actions in rural areas, potentially applicable to any rural sector.openMarini Govigli V.; Alkhaled S.; Arnesen T.; Barlagne C.; Bjerck M.; Burlando C.; Melnykovych M.; Fernandez-Blanco C.R.; Sfeir P.; Gorriz-Mifsud E.Marini Govigli V.; Alkhaled S.; Arnesen T.; Barlagne C.; Bjerck M.; Burlando C.; Melnykovych M.; Fernandez-Blanco C.R.; Sfeir P.; Gorriz-Mifsud E

Value Creation from Application Service Provisioning: Lessons from Four Vendor Firms

This paper embraces the electronic business model concept as the unit of analysis for investigating application service providers (ASPs). It develops three constructs fundamental to the ASP business model: strategic positioning, product/service portfolio, and customer value proposition. Four short case study examples of different ASP business models are discussed. The findings suggest that, despite firm efforts to strategically differentiate their ASP business model from their rivals, each failed to provide the customer with an attractive value proposition to achieve a sustainable competitive position

Corporate governance in the telecommunications industry

Thesis(Master) --KDI School:Master of Strategy & International Management,1998Technological, regulatory, and economic forces have been changing the telecommunications industry. Korea Telecom, the leading telecommunications company in Korea, is experiencing privatization, deregulation, and market opening which is resulting in the weakening of its monopolistic position. This paper aims to analyze the governance structure of telecommunications companies by reviewing the existing literature and conducting case studies of telcos in different stages of privatization. This study analyzes several telecommunications companies, such as AT&T and BT – the leading telcos with diffuse ownership – and Deutsche Telekom and France Telecom – those still regulated by their respective government. The key findings obtained through the case studies are as follows: First, this study did not find a significant relationship between firm performance and the composition of the board. Second, in the face of rapidly deregulating environment, the telcos have begun to give emphasis on the form of executive compensation by increasing the variable portion of the compensation. Finally, the market for corporate control is becoming an important mechanism for resolving owner-manager conflicts after privatization and deregulation.1. INTRODUCTION 2. LITERATURE REVIEW ON CORPORATE GOVERNANCE 3. ANALYSIS OF TELECOM COMPANIES’ GOVERNANCE STRUCTURE 4. SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONmasterpublishedby Jeongtae Jeon

Rawls, Fraser, redistribution, recognition and The World Summit on the Information Society

The author frames an account of the 2005/6 World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) and the Working Group on Internet Governance (WGIG) in the framework of John Rawls' arguments for redistribution using the 'difference principle' and Nancy Fraser's arguments for recognition as constituents of justice. He argues that the intensity and character of debates in the WSIS/WGIG can better be understood in terms of Fraser's notion of recognition rather than Rawls' notion of redistribution. He argues that the dynamics of WSIS/WGIG can be understood in terms of conflicting recognition claims from states and civil society focused on the legitimacy of "trilateralism", including civil society, as a principle of participation in these Internet governance fora

Analysis of dynamic capabilities in the internationalisation process

Dynamic capabilities are firm’s ability to integrate, build, and reconfigure internal and external resources and competences to address and shape rapidly changing business environments. In order to overcome internalization theory deficiencies, they have been advanced by eminent professor at Berkley University David J. Teece so as to explain multinational enterprise internationalization. Sensing specifically becomes the firm ability to identify business opportunities abroad. Seizing instead involves being able to address such foreign opportunities. Transforming is declined for the purposes of this study in the management of the relationship between headquarter and its subsidiaries and offices abroad. After having reviewed studies covering such issue, main purpose of this analysis is to investigate how dynamic capabilities manifest themselves in international expansion of a Multinational enterprise. In order to do so, a qualitative case-study having as subject Telecom Italia Sparkle S.p.A. is presented. The company is a leading global international telecommunications provider with a significant international presence. While sensing and seizing capabilities are easily identified and observed, company structural limits which do not make possible transforming capability nurturing are presented. Finally a potential interconnection between the absence of trasforming capability and the need for a parnership is advance