804 research outputs found

    A Framework to assess the value of web services

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    Large organizations often begin to adopt new software technologies prior to establishing appropriate value frameworks. This approach may produce sub-optimal investment decisions and technology adoption rates, and introduce excessive risk. In this thesis, a value-based framework is developed for assessing the impact of Web Services technology investments on business systems development. The value factors included in the framework are data management, application development and deployment, system integration, and response time to market opportunities

    Policy driven security architectures for eBusiness

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    The dawning of the twenty-first century and genesis of a new millennium has been extremely kind to technological advance. Industries and society alike have reaped the extreme benefits of technology at its finest. Technological progress has also proven to be extraordinarily beneficial to businesses and their bottom lines when properly employed. The need for automated business logic and functionality has spawned numerous concepts and efforts to capitalize on advanced business requirements. Probably the most popular and revolutionary to date of all initiatives is the advent of eBusiness. A direct descendant of Electronic Data Interchange (EDI), eBusiness has and continues to evolve into more than a phenomenon, but rather a sound component of successful corporations and organizations. The evolution and acceptance of eBusiness has created a ripple effect throughout the technical and business worlds. The promise of this wonderful concept and its accompanying technology has forced companies to completely rethink strategic planning efforts, and to sit up and pay full attention to this ever-growing development. One area that has been extremely affected by the wide spread acceptance of eBusiness and its counterparts are the architectures and infrastructures now utilized to support these efforts. Enterprise architectures that had originally been designed to shield internal business activities from the public eye of the Internet and other domains have been either replaced, redesigned, or melded with new architectural designs that proclaim companies and their offerings to the world, all in a digital atmosphere. This proclamation can be exceptionally lucrative and damaging, all at the same time. The conception of the Internet has without a doubt been the single most important episode in the continuing fairytale and illumination of technological advance. What once was considered the Underground Railroad of information; limited to universities, research groups, and government organizations has become the Autobahn of electronic data, and continues to evolve and transcend barriers and boundaries. The ability to surpass traditional barriers such as geography and distance serves as a definite attraction for organizations to eBusiness, and a tremendous amount of companies are acting upon this attraction. However, the dark side of the Internet is a playground for adversaries such as, but not limited to hackers (crackers), lone criminals, malicious insiders (disgruntled employees), industrial spies, media representatives, organized crime, terrorists, national intelligence organizations, special interest groups, competitors, script kiddies, and infowarriors to name a few. All of these can and should be considered a potential danger while individuals and organizations alike interact via the Internet and private networks as well. Nowhere are the aforementioned dangers as prevalent as they are in the increasingly popular world of e. eBusiness, eCommerce, eMarketPlaces, eAuctions, eSupplyChains, etc., etc.; the list goes on and on. The digitization of data is big business, and organizations are realizing the infinite potential involved with participating in these markets, as well as utilizing it to streamline day-to-day business operations and management. Around the globe scores of innovative, thought-provoking systems are deployed daily to feed upon the e landscape and take advantage of this new and exciting world of prosperity. However, the same factions that make haste to establish an Internet or web-based presence and rush to take advantage of digital data and goods are often the very ones that almost always either forget, simply neglect, or place a low priority on an absolute vital necessity of all e-efforts. Security! Therefore, the intent of this thesis is to examine and introduce methodical approaches to designing and implementing security life cycles that are driven by policy for secure eBusiness architectures. In order to provide the necessary assurance and security needed for eBusiness architectures efficient well thought out life cycles must be employed for security practices. Security, like any other component of Information Technology (IT) is not a hit or miss scenario. It is a continuos and meticulous process that is all encompassing of all veins of an enterprise. In order to design a secure architecture a procedural approach must be taken, so that all threats, vulnerabilities, adversaries, holes, nooks, and crannies are covered. Even after all these things have been addressed there is no such thing as an impenetrable system or infrastructure, especially in a networked environment. Given enough time and resources the strongest of confines can be made as vulnerable as a home PC connected to the Net. This is especially true for those systems that operate over public networks such as the Internet. Therefore, processes and procedures must be introduced, refined and constantly managed to maintain a secure state of operation. This text will illustrate the process of assessing technical environments utilized for eBusiness initiatives and gathering requirements for secure operation. Then taking those requirements and developing a functional security policy to govern over the system. Next, the document will discuss extracting requirements from the actual security policy and using them to create a plan of implementation. Also, during the implementation phase exists several testing and assurance activities that should be addressed. After, the overall implementation is completed and deployed, streamlined processes must be applied and properly managed to ensure that the hardened solution continues to function, as it should. An adequate cycle is much more intensive than described above, and this thesis will provide the detail needed to thoroughly address the concepts described here

    Envisioning health equity for American Indian/Alaska Natives: a unique HIT opportunity

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    The Indian Health Service provides care to remote and under-resourced communities in the United States. American Indian/Alaska Native patients have some of the highest morbidity and mortality among any ethnic group in the United States. Starting in the 1980s, the IHS implemented the Resource and Patient Management System health information technology (HIT) platform to improve efficiency and quality to address these disparities. The IHS is currently assessing the Resource and Patient Management System to ensure that changing health information needs are met. HIT assessments have traditionally focused on cost, reimbursement opportunities, infrastructure, required or desired functionality, and the ability to meet provider needs. Little information exists on frameworks that assess HIT legacy systems to determine solutions for an integrated rural healthcare system whose end goal is health equity. This search for a next-generation HIT solution for a historically underserved population presents a unique opportunity to envision and redefine HIT that supports health equity as its core mission

    The First 25 Years of the Bled eConference: Themes and Impacts

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    The Bled eConference is the longest-running themed conference associated with the Information Systems discipline. The focus throughout its first quarter-century has been the application of electronic tools, migrating progressively from Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) via Inter-Organisational Systems (IOS) and eCommerce to encompass all aspects of the use of networking facilities in industry and government, and more recently by individuals, groups and society as a whole. This paper reports on an examination of the conference titles and of the titles and abstracts of the 773 refereed papers published in the Proceedings since 1995. This identified a long and strong focus on categories of electronic business and corporate perspectives, which has broadened in recent years to encompass the democratic, the social and the personal. The conference\u27s extend well beyond the papers and their thousands of citations and tens of thousands of downloads. Other impacts have included innovative forms of support for the development of large numbers of graduate students, and the many international research collaborations that have been conceived and developed in a beautiful lake-side setting in Slovenia

    The role of e-procurement in purchasing management

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    This exposition summarises research published in several academic articles, in order to meet the requirements of PhD by publication. The focus of the work is on the role of electronic procurement in management of the purchasing function. From the late 1990s a number of independent e-procurement mechanisms were launched which offered potential benefits such as increased order accuracy, transaction efficiency and greater integration between trading partners. At the outset of this programme of research, e-procurement was therefore an emerging phenomenon with little academic research and presented an opportunity to investigate a largely unexplored area. Edmondson and McManus (2007) suggest that for nascent, as opposed to mature areas of research, where few formal constructs or measures exist, an exploratory, qualitative approach is required. This research followed such an approach through the use of case studies, involving observation, participation and interviews with key organisational actors. Each paper makes use of several cases in order to compare and contrast results from different organisations and to draw conclusions from multi-case analysis. The published articles focus on the impact of core applications within e-procurement, including online reverse auctions, electronic marketplaces, online catalogue sites, and buying systems covering the ‘requisition to pay’ cycle. The findings from the papers address a number of core themes in purchasing management. In considering buyer-supplier relationships, it was observed that such dyads are driven by traditional buyer negotiation factors such as segmentation, power and price and that use of eprocurement applications tended to enforce such traditional behaviours. In relation to the potential for integration, the study found that integration between firms was barely affected, as the concept of integration was neither an objective nor a business case driver for e-procurement adoption. This situation reflects the finding that procurement managers pursue functional targets rather than supply chain-level objectives. However, other significant effects from e-procurement adoption were noted such as the tendency by buyers to reduce supplier numbers and a move to re-engineer the procurement function in buying firms, through automating transactional processes. The research finds that e-procurement does not have a deterministic impact on purchasing management, and that it acts as an enabler to more effective management of the function though the way its different mechanisms are deployed. The exposition establishes that e-procurement is used in relation to supply conditions which are characterised by both ‘markets’ and ‘hierarchies’, but that it is the predefined purchasing strategy of the firm, rather than available technology solutions, which determines when markets and hierarchies are used. Additionally, an original model is introduced, focusing on developing an e-procurement policy which can support strategic purchasing goals. This model extrapolates findings from stages in the research, and marries together elements from various papers and frameworks therein, to produce some guidelines for adoption of this technology

    Alignment as a Process of Enabling Organizational Adaptation: Extending the Theory of Alignment as Guided Adaptation

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    Thesis (PhD) - Indiana University, Business, 2005This dissertation seeks to generalize and extend the theory of alignment as guided adaptation (TAGA) (Ward & Vessey Working Paper). TAGA is a descriptive theory that views alignment from a multilevel, process-oriented prospective. It is based upon the premise that in the short run each alignment factor adapts independently of the others in the alignment system. In the long run, however, the alignment factors are an interdependent system. TAGA was developed based on a small firm that had a non-strategic view of IS. This dissertation therefore seeks to generalize the theory to firms that have a formal IS strategy and planning process and are large in size. The dissertation also extends the theory by examining the role that changes external to the alignment factors play in the alignment factor adaptation process. Three case studies were conducted using semi-structured interviews with 31 high-level business and IS managers as data sources. The data was coded into change episodes demarcated by changes in business strategy (intent and initiatives) and was analyzed using alternative templates, visual mapping, and temporal bracketing strategies (Langley 1999; Ward & Vessey Working Paper). The results indicate that TAGA generalizes to large firms and to firms with a formal IS strategy and planning process. Within these additional contexts, TAGA was able to explain the patterns of change in the alignment episodes while the traditional view of alignment as synchronization could not. The results also indicate that changes in the outer environment such as the level at which the changed occurred in the factor hierarchy, the magnitude of the change initiating adaptation, and the pace at which change occurred influenced the need for change in the internal alignment factors. This research has implications for both academic and practitioner communities. The research shows that TAGA is applicable to firms that have a formal IS strategy and planning process; and that factors such as the level, magnitude, and pace of changes impacts the adaptation process. From a practitioner perspective, this research provides insight into managing the alignment process by redefining how to view alignment

    Supporting strategic decisions in fiber-to-the-home deployments: techno-economic modeling in a multi-actor setting

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