Moving to the cloud: Estimating the internet connection bandwidth

IT Infrastructures (ITIs) have long been understood in terms of people and resources such as servers, routers, firewalls and operating systems, among other components, running and providing services inside the organization. The need to reduce the cost of ITI ownership, by offloading its capacity to third parties, has motivated organizations to consider the Cloud Computing alternative. The main drawback they face when opting for the cloud is the dependency on and requirements of the internet connection, since it must be fast and reliable. This paper addresses this concern by providing guidelines for estimating internet connection bandwidth requirements for a prototypical cloud-based organization represented by means of an IT infrastructure pattern. ITI patterns are reusable and proven solutions to support the ITI design process and to facilitate the communication among stakeholders.info:eu-repo/semantics/acceptedVersio

Open vs.Closed standards for ambient intelligence: an exploratory study of adoption

Emerging forms of structurally complex information systems, such as Ambient Intelligence (AmI), requires the integration of a range of technologies. To enable such systems’ development there is a reliance on interoperability standards. However, due to their inherent characteristics, the adoption of open or closed standards by technology vendors can have impacts the later stages of the adoption and diffusion of systems. This paper reports on research-in-progress which explores the adoption of open and closed standards by technology vendors engaged in AmI development. Existing models of innovation adoption and diffusion fail to adequately account for adoption in more complex technological contexts. In order to address such deficiencies, current perspectives on standards are discussed, before a conceptual framework for structuring the research is proposed which integrates both existing adoption theory and standards-oriented research. The use of the European Consumer Electronics sector as a unit of analysis is discussed, before concluding with an overview of how the study will progress

Perceived Risk and Resilience in the Face of Natural Disasters: A Study of Hospital

Though hospital information systems have been extensively studied as a technology and there is now a growing body of literature in the area of infrastructure interdependencies, the dependencies of civil and built infrastructure on the health care information infrastructure (HII) is understudied. In particular, there is no study to our knowledge that addresses the issue of Hospital Information Infrastructure in the context of disasters. This study explores how an organization’s information systems infrastructure is affected by disasters and examines the relationship between organizational resilience and information infrastructure effectiveness by using conceptual model

Corporate Information Infrastructure – Management Aspects

The development of information and communication technologies enforces an increasing dependence of the business on a successfully built and developed corporate information technologies infrastructure. The role of the IT manager and the IT team of the company constantly evolves. In this paper, we present management aspects of the core components and desired characteristics of IT infrastructure in the corporate organization as well as the human factor behind (or beside) it in the face of the IT manager and the IT team of the company. We develop a conceptual framework of the connections, dependencies, responsibilities and activities of an IT manager and company’s IT team

Governance and assessment insights in Information Technology: the Val IT Model

The purpose of this paper is the investigation of the relationship between Information Technology and value creation. In doing so, the paper presents a conceptual framework based on the Val IT model. This framework can assist companies in the selection, implementation and optimization of IT investments to create long-term value. The paper is based on a qualitative approach with the inclusion of a single-method approach. Research is developed according to the study of national and international literature. Following an initial analysis of existing literature on the evaluation of company investments, research has been conducted through the Val IT method to assess these intangible assets. The sources of research are secondary in nature (documents, reports, newspaper articles, papers and scientific books). This methodology emphasises the connection between the modern services created in the knowledge economy and the application of new technologies, especially in the field of Information Technology. Val IT is a governance framework for creating business value from IT investments. It allows companies to increase the possibility of selecting investments with a high potential of value creation, as well as with a greater possibility of success in executing, creating, strengthening and using these services

Assessment of IT Infrastructures: A Model Driven Approach

Several approaches to evaluate IT infrastructure architectures have been proposed, mainly by supplier and consulting firms. However, they do not have a unified approach of these architectures where all stakeholders can cement the decision-making process, thus facilitating comparability as well as the verification of best practices adoption. The main goal of this dissertation is the proposal of a model-based approach to mitigate this problem. A metamodel named SDM (System Definition Model) and expressed with the UML (Unified Modeling Language) is used to represent structural and operational knowledge on the infrastructures. This metamodel is automatically instantiated through the capture of infrastructures configurations of existing distributed architectures, using a proprietary tool and a transformation tool that was built in the scope of this dissertation. The quantitative evaluation is performed using the M2DM (Meta-Model Driven Measurement) approach that uses OCL (Object Constraint Language) to formulate the required metrics. This proposal is expected to increase the understandability of IT infrastructures by all stakeholders (IT architects, application developers, testers, operators and maintenance teams) as well as to allow expressing their strategies of management and evolution. To illustrate the use of the proposed approach, we assess the complexity of some real cases in the diachronic and synchronic perspective

Information Technology Standards in eResearch: A Conceptual Model of the Primary Adoption Process in Higher Education Organizations

Current research on IT standards tends to focus on their lifecycle: from the development and selection, to their implementation and use. This work proposed an interdisciplinary perspective to analyze primary adoption process in the eResearch domain. As organizations are the core entities in the innovation process, the analysis of IT standards adoption was applied to eResearch infrastructures within higher education organizations. The core argument was built on the adopter s viewpoint as it provides the most explanatory process about adoption. Two international case studies probed the suitability of a model to identify the determinant role of factors like external and internal networks, top management support and organization structure. This dissertation delivers new insights that contribute to bring certainty about one relevant context of standards adoption

Factors Influencing Customer Satisfaction towards E-shopping in Malaysia

Online shopping or e-shopping has changed the world of business and quite a few people have decided to work with these features. What their primary concerns precisely and the responses from the globalisation are the competency of incorporation while doing their businesses. E-shopping has also increased substantially in Malaysia in recent years. The rapid increase in the e-commerce industry in Malaysia has created the demand to emphasize on how to increase customer satisfaction while operating in the e-retailing environment. It is very important that customers are satisfied with the website, or else, they would not return. Therefore, a crucial fact to look into is that companies must ensure that their customers are satisfied with their purchases that are really essential from the ecommerce’s point of view. With is in mind, this study aimed at investigating customer satisfaction towards e-shopping in Malaysia. A total of 400 questionnaires were distributed among students randomly selected from various public and private universities located within Klang valley area. Total 369 questionnaires were returned, out of which 341 questionnaires were found usable for further analysis. Finally, SEM was employed to test the hypotheses. This study found that customer satisfaction towards e-shopping in Malaysia is to a great extent influenced by ease of use, trust, design of the website, online security and e-service quality. Finally, recommendations and future study direction is provided. Keywords: E-shopping, Customer satisfaction, Trust, Online security, E-service quality, Malaysia