Reuse-Mechanisms for Mass Customizing IT-Service Agreements

Divergent requirements of customers limit the potential of information technology (IT) service providers to achieve economies of scale through the standardization of service agreements. Continuous change requests in ongoing IT-service relationships complicate matters even more. Mass customization strategies have successfully addressed similar challenges in industrial sectors by reusing, i.e. composing and adapting standardized modules. Transforming this strategy to IT-service management, we present an approach of reuse-based IT-service customization in order to increase both effectiveness and efficiency at the stages of initial service specification, customization of offerings, and continuous adjustment of ongoing service agreements. This is proposed to be achieved by adopting well-established reusemechanisms of reference information modeling. Their strict application in service agreement specification aims for enabling industrialized on-demand service contracting and provisioning. The approach has been developed and prototypically applied in close cooperation with IT-organizations

Sustainable product development strategies: Business planning and performance implications

Copyright © 2012 by Institution of Mechanical Engineers. This is the author's accepted manuscript. The final published article is available from the link below.Manufacturing firms are under many financial and competitive pressures which focus attention on the performance of their manufacturing processes. In this paper the opportunities for improving the environmental impact of products within the constraints of existing manufacturing infrastructure are examined. Approaches which support sustainability in two aspects are proposed, firstly, the provision of products to the users in ways which extend the product life and secondly, manufacturing approaches which reduce resource usage. This paper outlines three different sustainable development strategies for different product types and describes the cost implications for manufacturers across the life-cycle. The performance measures affected by these strategies are examined drawing on product development case studies from a number of high technology sectors to highlight the different approaches taken. The results are intended to aid manufacturers during the earliest stages of business planning to consider alternative product development approaches which are more sustainable

A methodical procedure for designing consumer oriented on-demand IT service propositions

IT providers are increasingly facing the challenge to adapt their previously resource oriented service portfolios in order to offer their customers services which explicitly support business processes. Such customer centric service propositions, however, seem to contradict the demand for standardized and automated operational IT processes more than traditional IT service offers, as they are even more subject to customer individual reengineering efforts due to permanently changing business requirements. In order to reconcile increased efficiency in operational processes and effectiveness in consumer oriented service propositions, we propose (1) to predefine all service propositions in consideration of both consumer oriented commitments and operational processes, and (2) to allow for standardized customization by offering a selection of complementary service propositions that extend commitments regarding customer oriented functionality and performance. Such service propositions are aligned with a company's entities such as workplaces. Thereby the customer organization is enabled to trace, control and adjust commitments, value and expenses of IT services per entity in its business. We introduce a procedural model for designing and on-demand requesting this kind of service propositions, and we illustrate the model's application and impact by examples taken from two large projects with an associated IT provide

The Impact of Digital Technology on Network Value Co-creation

In recent years, the discussion about how companies integrate new technologies into their value creation and how this affects their business has intensified. The trend towards digitalization is particularly challenging for smaller, value co-creating (VCC) companies in networks, yet little research has been done in this context. In response, this paper identifies four key technologies for promoting network VCC: (1) a service configuration system, (2) a centralized knowledge base, (3) an analytics system, and (4) a shared IT platform. We conducted a single embedded case study in a company network introducing these key technologies and thereby digitally transforming its VCC. Our results show how the companies in the network are approaching their transformation and what the impact and role of the technologies in their network VCC are

High-Performance Cloud Computing: A View of Scientific Applications

Scientific computing often requires the availability of a massive number of computers for performing large scale experiments. Traditionally, these needs have been addressed by using high-performance computing solutions and installed facilities such as clusters and super computers, which are difficult to setup, maintain, and operate. Cloud computing provides scientists with a completely new model of utilizing the computing infrastructure. Compute resources, storage resources, as well as applications, can be dynamically provisioned (and integrated within the existing infrastructure) on a pay per use basis. These resources can be released when they are no more needed. Such services are often offered within the context of a Service Level Agreement (SLA), which ensure the desired Quality of Service (QoS). Aneka, an enterprise Cloud computing solution, harnesses the power of compute resources by relying on private and public Clouds and delivers to users the desired QoS. Its flexible and service based infrastructure supports multiple programming paradigms that make Aneka address a variety of different scenarios: from finance applications to computational science. As examples of scientific computing in the Cloud, we present a preliminary case study on using Aneka for the classification of gene expression data and the execution of fMRI brain imaging workflow.Comment: 13 pages, 9 figures, conference pape