An examination of e-business adoption by South African companies.

Thesis (MBA)-University of Natal, Durban, 2002.Globally, companies are adopting electronic business to sustain their competitive advantage and to link this with their core competencies. The world, as described by Gartner, is currently in a "Trough of Disillusionment" - an area of pessimism where the perceived value of e-business are thought of not delivering sustainable value. However, challenges and opportunities exist to change this perception. This dissertation makes a case for e-business adoption by laying out the value of e-business and discussing the components that make up e-business. Evidence exits linking e-business and competitive advantage and the degree of e-business adoption is producing shifts in the competitive landscape, thereby becoming a integral part of business activities across the world. Literature research is presented, making a case for adoption of e-business and its role in sustainable competitive advantage. The case therefore can also be made for South African companies and their e-readiness can be determined. The dissertation then proceed to examine the adoption of e-business by South African companies, looking at their readiness and making conclusions based in various criteria such as market segmentation, company size and so forth. Qualitative and quantitative research is presented in the form of secondary data from reputable sources and is discussed as and when presented. Evidence of IT contribution to competitive advantage is presented and the concept of the Intelligent Enterprise is introduced. International e-commerce trends is discussed along with Gartner's Net Liberalised Organisations (NLO) and the specific components making up e-business, such as supply chain management, business intelligence, enterprise resource planning, infrastructure, intermediation and customer relationship management, are examined in order to determine adoption levels in these technologies and business enablers. The dissertation goes onto examine South African B2B adoption trends focusing on e-commerce enabling technologies and components as a function of company size. Implementations, solutions and obstacles are presented and discussed. An Examination of E-Business Adoption by South African Companies. Closer examination of corporate IT trends for certain industry segments is evaluated with the primary focus on enterprise software application implementation phases. This is an exhaustive look at implementation of tools ranging from CRM through to portal technologies and network security. Next the penetration levels of enterprise applications for various vertical industries are looked into, as well as the degree of penetration propensity as a gauge of trends. Obstacles to e-business, Internet connectivity and the effects of IT budgets on adoption are examined. Future trends are discussed during these chapters. Internet based B2B exchanges and offerings (both vertical and functional or hub exchanges) have been researched in various industry sectors. These are presented and conclusions drawn as to the positioning of these exchanges in the South African marketplace. Finally, recommendations, trends, conclusions and future predictions are presented along with the challenges that the marketplace (both small and large company size segments), is facing.Telkom

Always in control? Sovereign states in cyberspace

For well over twenty years, we have witnessed an intriguing debate about the nature of cyberspace. Used for everything from communication to commerce, it has transformed the way individuals and societies live. But how has it impacted the sovereignty of states? An initial wave of scholars argued that it had dramatically diminished centralised control by states, helped by a tidal wave of globalisation and freedom. These libertarian claims were considerable. More recently, a new wave of writing has argued that states have begun to recover control in cyberspace, focusing on either the police work of authoritarian regimes or the revelations of Edward Snowden. Both claims were wide of the mark. By contrast, this article argues that we have often misunderstood the materiality of cyberspace and its consequences for control. It not only challenges the libertarian narrative of freedom, it suggests that the anarchic imaginary of the Internet as a ‘Wild West’ was deliberately promoted by states in order to distract from the reality. The Internet, like previous forms of electronic connectivity, consists mostly of a physical infrastructure located in specific geographies and jurisdictions. Rather than circumscribing sovereignty, it has offered centralised authority new ways of conducting statecraft. Indeed, the Internet, high-speed computing, and voice recognition were all the result of security research by a single information hegemon and therefore it has always been in control

Premises for Reforming the Regulation of Securities Offerings: An Essay

Cox discusses six fundamental tenets that should guide the regulation of public offerings of securities. It is assumed that regulation is to be re-examined from the ground up, with no political or regulatory constraints

Virtual communities: between culture and economy

From its earliest years, the development of the Internet was grounded in economic relations, be it with the government or private investors. This condition spilled over into the Web development and all of its corresponding features, including the people populating the Web – thus making an impact on a new form of community: a virtual one. The economic relations of the real world affect the creation of new forms of labor, referred to as immaterial labor, which is produced by a new type of worker. This new type of worker is endemic to the new conditions of labor most visible in instances of human interaction, participation, cooperation and collaboration in virtual communities, best examples being the social networking sites. The collaborating subject, i.e. the producer is at the same time both a consumer and a producer of the products of the social production happening in the virtual world. It is referred to as a prosumer. The concept of a prosumer is closely linked to the new forms of economic gains for the individual users. The gains need not be monetary, they also include psychological satisfaction for the individual. This psychological effect of participating in virtual communities is termed affective gain, or affective reward. In addition, the Web users’ participation in online communities is one of the main sources of profit for the large companies online owning the said social networking sites. However, there are certain aspects of collaboration online that are not susceptible to profit extraction. They include, among other things, the open source culture online. Open source movement allows the individual to be excluded from larger monetary exchanges and capitalist relations operating online. It pits users’ collaboration – seen as one of the main sources of profit – against market relations online. All these various aspects of our virtual lives are explored in detail

THE DIGITAL COUCH: AN INVESTIGATION OF THE ONLINE-COUNSELLING CLIENT EXPERIENCE

Technology is an increasingly integral part of communication. Counselling and psychotherapy have likewise incorporated electronic means of interaction to increase access and broaden the scope of service delivery, but little information looks at these services from the perspective of the client. To determine what the salient features of the clients’ subjective experiences of electronically-mediated therapy are, this study employs a survey to learn the experience of those who have undergone e-counselling. Findings are based on a Postmodern, Grounded Theory analysis of online questionnaires. The analysis indicates that participants are insufficiently disabused of preconceptions about online communication, and suggests that they underestimate their vulnerability to internet security concerns. However, communication problems notwithstanding, online clients continue the course of their counselling, and develop mastery of internet-specific communication tactics

Vulnerabilities of signaling system number 7 (SS7) to cyber attacks and how to mitigate against these vulnerabilities.

As the mobile network subscriber base exponentially increases due to some attractive offerings such as anytime anywhere accessibility, seamless roaming, inexpensive handsets with sophisticated applications, and Internet connectivity, the mobile telecommunications network has now become the primary source of communication for not only business and pleasure, but also for the many life and mission critical services. This mass popularisation of telecommunications services has resulted in a heavily loaded Signaling System number 7 (SS7) signaling network which is used in Second and Third Generations (2G and 3G) mobile networks and is needed for call control and services such as caller identity, roaming, and for sending short message servirces. SS7 signaling has enjoyed remarkable popularity for providing acceptable voice quality with negligible connection delays, pos- sibly due to its circuit-switched heritage. However, the traditional SS7 networks are expensive to lease and to expand, hence to cater for the growing signaling demand and to provide the seamless interconnectivity between the SS7 and IP networks a new suite of protocols known as Signaling Transport (SIGTRAN) has been designed to carry SS7 signaling messages over IP. Due to the intersignaling between the circuit-switched and the packet-switched networks, the mo- bile networks have now left the “walled garden”, which is a privileged, closed and isolated ecosystem under the full control of mobile carriers, using proprietary protocols and has minimal security risks due to restricted user access. Potentially, intersignaling can be exploited from the IP side to disrupt the services provided on the circuit-switched side. This study demonstrates the vulnerabilities of SS7 messages to cyber-attacks while being trans- ported over IP networks and proposes some solutions based on securing both the IP transport and SCTP layers of the SIGTRAN protocol stack

A Framework to assess the value of web services

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

Territorial intelligence : The contribution Web 3.0 technologies in practice the territorial intelligence

The term "Territorial intelligence 3.0" refers to the usage of the web 3.0 technologies, such as the mobile web, web applications and the semantic web, in the process of Territorial intelligence. The territorial intelligence represents an offensive and a defensive attitude with all implications in terms of the information generated on global markets. The concept, the origin and the foundation of the above-mentioned term emerging in two distinct communities, one brings together practitioners of territorial intelligence developed around the institutional field, it is the case of top-down territorial intelligence. And the other community, brings together theorists searches in the multidisciplinary academic field, it comes from research on the economy, geopolitics, knowledge management and the discipline of information and communication technology sciences, this is the case of bottom-up territorial intelligence. The Web 3.0 technologies, combine, on the one hand, web 2.0 technologies; the community Web (social networks: Linked in, Twitter, Facebook, etc.) and the collaborative Web (Wikipedia and Weblogs) (Quoniam & Lucien, 2009), and, on the other hand, smartphones, the internet of objects (Internet of Things), cloud computing technology and big data. “Web 3.0 is the combination of smart phones, social networks, Web 2.0, cloud computing and emerging business models as explained above” (Russell et al., 2016), web 3.0 practitioners consider that much of the world's information being correlated and frankly opening up to the general population, combine between these two concepts: Generating the management strategic territorial information founded on Web 3.0 and working in favor of the territory. There are generally two types of territorial intelligence 3.0. The first one is the top-Down Territorial Intelligence 3.0, it’s the evolution of the national policy of competitive Intelligence 3.0 at the local level, but the term “competitive Intelligence 3.0” has been subjected to the same web evolution. And the second one is the bottom up territorial intelligence 3.0, it is manifested by the contribution of the actors of the territory in the process of local development through the technology of web 3.0. The goal of our research is to propose a conceptual model base on a theoretical in the context of territorial intelligence in a digital sphere by web 3.0 technology. This model studied the process the contribute Web 3.0 technology to the practice of territorial intelligence and to meet them in.The term "Territorial intelligence 3.0" refers to the usage of the web 3.0 technologies, such as the mobile web, web applications and the semantic web, in the process of Territorial intelligence. The territorial intelligence represents an offensive and a defensive attitude with all implications in terms of the information generated on global markets. The concept, the origin and the foundation of the above-mentioned term emerging in two distinct communities, one brings together practitioners of territorial intelligence developed around the institutional field, it is the case of top-down territorial intelligence. And the other community, brings together theorists searches in the multidisciplinary academic field, it comes from research on the economy, geopolitics, knowledge management and the discipline of information and communication technology sciences, this is the case of bottom-up territorial intelligence. The Web 3.0 technologies, combine, on the one hand, web 2.0 technologies; the community Web (social networks: Linked in, Twitter, Facebook, etc.) and the collaborative Web (Wikipedia and Weblogs) (Quoniam & Lucien, 2009), and, on the other hand, smartphones, the internet of objects (Internet of Things), cloud computing technology and big data. “Web 3.0 is the combination of smart phones, social networks, Web 2.0, cloud computing and emerging business models as explained above” (Russell et al., 2016), web 3.0 practitioners consider that much of the world's information being correlated and frankly opening up to the general population, combine between these two concepts: Generating the management strategic territorial information founded on Web 3.0 and working in favor of the territory. There are generally two types of territorial intelligence 3.0. The first one is the top-Down Territorial Intelligence 3.0, it’s the evolution of the national policy of competitive Intelligence 3.0 at the local level, but the term “competitive Intelligence 3.0” has been subjected to the same web evolution. And the second one is the bottom up territorial intelligence 3.0, it is manifested by the contribution of the actors of the territory in the process of local development through the technology of web 3.0. The goal of our research is to propose a conceptual model base on a theoretical in the context of territorial intelligence in a digital sphere by web 3.0 technology. This model studied the process the contribute Web 3.0 technology to the practice of territorial intelligence and to meet them in

Alibaba's strategic drift

It is fundamental in both a theoretical and practical sense, to analyse the strategies of successful e-businesses who were formulated and operated alongside incumbent competitors. Thus, there have been an array of strategic arguments concerning the rapidly-burgeoning virtual powerhouse Alibaba, who amidst a sea of fortified competitors, found their ground to become one of the most prominent e-businesses of the decade. At the commencing stages, Alibaba lacked a specific strategic goal, aside from the ethnic-originated ecology scheme. Further mishaps arose even after the take-off stage, when Alibaba opted to adhere to the diversification strategy, an evidently unusual phase for a virtual firm. Hence, it is the subject of common debate as to whether Alibaba cited a definitive strategic goal which guided their progress, or whether they were merely the product of a breakneck growth in the Chinese economy. This research will show how a leading e-Commerce company Alibaba has built B2B/C2C business portal Taobao/TMall and has transformed its transaction system from zhifubao into yuerbao and how it propelled Alipay to become a leading financial institution in the thriving digital market. In addition, strategic diversification on Chinese digital business will be examined through Alibaba case

Virtual worlds as adjustable environments for immersion in business meetings

Managing modern organizations requires innovative measures to facilitate interaction. In this paper, we focus on interaction mechanisms, such as business meetings. We attempt to highlight the possible contributions of virtual worlds in terms of such organizational mechanisms. This original work presents a review of the literature about business meetings and their structural properties. It also presents the specific properties of virtual worlds that serve as a mechanism for facilitating the interaction of multiple participants. Our research demonstrates that immersion is a property common to both meetings and virtual worlds. This immersion is expressed in a wide range of forms that are described in this paper