Information Technology Platforms: Definition and Research Directions

The concept of an information technology (IT) related platform is broad and covers phenomena ranging from the operating system Linux to the Internet. Such platforms are of increasing importance to innovation and value creation across many facets of industry and daily life. There is, however, a lack of common understanding in both research and industry about what is mean by the term platform when related to IT. This lack of consensus is detrimental to research and knowledge development. Thus, the aims of this study are to: (i) provide a sound definition of the IT-platform concept by identifying its distinguishing dimensions; and (ii) identify important current research directions for the IT-platform concept. To achieve these aims a systematic literature review was undertaken with 133 relevant articles taken from major information systems journals, conferences, and business publications. The study contributes by providing a sound base for future research into IT-platforms.Comment: Research-in-progress ISBN# 978-0-646-95337-3 Presented at the Australasian Conference on Information Systems 2015 (arXiv:1605.01032

Building Sustainable Business Practices: Design Principles for Reusable Artificial Intelligence

Many organizations are struggling to deploy artificial intelligence (AI) solutions due to widely discussed challenges such as lack of financial resources, AI knowledge expertise, and limited data access, but also due to development silos that do not facilitate a holistic approach in solving problems or fostering innovation. We address these challenges by building on design science research and developing a socio-technical artifact, i.e., design principles for reusable AI solutions. We draw on Wenger´s Community of Practice concept to refine and evaluate our artifact via design thinking workshop, focus group discussion, and expert interviews. We contribute to the growing literature on building sustainable business practices and green information systems stream by developing and eval-uating design requirements, and design principles that provide organizations with guidance on how to design AI solutions in a reusable and therefore sustainable manner

Building Enterprise Architecture Agility and Sustenance with SOA

Service-Oriented Architecture(SOA) is primarily regarded as a technical architecture consisting of tools and service specification to build loosely coupled applications. At another level it is also a means to leverage flexibility and agility to system services as it offers a hierarchical framework to coordinate simultaneous business process design and implementations using loosely coupled service infrastructures. SOA has been debated both in the academy and industry and misinterpretations of its nature impede its adoption. We summarize its historical origins and current evolutions. We review technologies that underlie SOA. In particular, we address how to integrate SOA initiatives with current technology platforms, and how to enforce reuse during the design of loosely coupled systems. We also analyze SOA design methodologies and platforms, and what are their roles in the application integration. Finally we outline challenges and future research directions for SOA

A Platform-based Design Approach for Flexible Software Components

We develop a design method that promotes flexible component design based on a common component platform with various plug-ins. The approach increases the flexibility and expandability of software components, which improves their reuse opportunities. We argue that such a flexible component design can expand reuse from relatively small infrastructure items, such as user interfaces, printing functionality, and data access modules, to the core of the application domain. Reusing such domain-specific items helps realize the true value of component-based software development. Following a design science research approach, we evaluated the component design method by assessing its correctness and its application to different scenarios. We also recruited a panel of experts to assess it

Flexible Software Component Design Using A Product Platform Approach

The concept of reusing software artifacts to improve development efficiency and software quality has been around for quite some time, yet it has focused mostly on in-house reuse with limited success. Recently developments in component-based software development, Web services, and service-oriented architecture are targeting inter-organizational reuse by promoting black-box reuse facilitated by standard Web service-based interface definitions. This reuse paradigm reduces dramatically the cost of component integration and maintenance, as it is no longer necessary to understand implementation details. However, this requires a very high level of standardization and clear functional definitions to facilitate retrieval through search engines. Because of this, its application has been limited to relatively small infrastructure items, such as user interfaces, printing components, and data access modules. Further, the reuse potential of such components is high, as infrastructure functionality is needed across domains. However, without the ability to build the core of an application around reusable software components, the true value of component-based software development that can offer lower cost, high quality, agility, and responsiveness cannot be realized. Thus, in order to move this adoption philosophy forward, domain-specific components must be available. This research develops a method that promotes flexible component design based on a common product platform with derivative products. Following the design research method, the methodology artifact will be evaluated through an experimental evaluation and a formal assessment of its value to component-based development