The role of Enterprise portals in Enterprise Integration

Today’s enterprises are moving business systems to the Internet - to connect people, business processes, and people to business processes in enterprise and across enterprise boundaries. The portal brings it all together: business processes, departmental sites, knowledge management resources, enterprise management systems, CRM systems, analytics, email, calendars, external content, transactions, administration, workflow, and more. The goal of this paper is to present the role of the Enterprise Portal in internal and external enterprise integration.Portal, Enterprise Portal, Integration, ETL, EAI, EII

Digital learning: an Australian Research Agenda

The purpose of this paper is to provide some suggestions for consideration of directions for Australian educational research about ICT in education, more recently being called digital learning. A number of agencies in Australia, Canada, Europe, New Zealand, the UK, and the USA have already embarked on developing research agendas and undertaking research into the use of digital learning. This report highlights some of the significant areas in which research has been undertaken and isolates those areas where there may be a need for further research or where there are gaps in the research agenda for Australia. This paper is written as an overview, raising a number of issues relevant to establishing a research agenda for teaching and learning using ICT. However, the development of a national research agenda needs to be the result of discussion and agreement between a number of researchers and experts in the area of ICT in education. This paper is seen a possible starting point for that discussion

Integrating information and knowledge for enterprise innovation

It has widely been accepted that enterprise integration, can be a source of socio-technical and cultural problems within organisations wishing to provide a focussed end-to-end business service. This can cause possible “straitjacketing” of business process architectures, thus suppressing responsive business re-engineering and competitive advantage for some companies. Accordingly, the current typology and emergent forms of Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) and Enterprise Application Integration (EAI) technologies are set in the context of understanding information and knowledge integration philosophies. As such, key influences and trends in emerging IS integration choices, for end-to-end, cost-effective and flexible knowledge integration, are examined. As touch points across and outside organisations proliferate, via work-flow and relationship management-driven value innovation, aspects of knowledge refinement and knowledge integration pose challenges to maximising the potential of innovation and sustainable success, within enterprises. This is in terms of the increasing propensity for data fragmentation and the lack of effective information management, in the light of information overload. Furthermore, the nature of IS mediation which is inherent within decision making and workflow-based business processes, provides the basis for evaluation of the effects of information and knowledge integration. Hence, the authors propose a conceptual, holistic evaluation framework which encompasses these ideas. It is thus argued that such trends, and their implications regarding enterprise IS integration to engender sustainable competitive advantage, require fundamental re-thinking

INSPIRAL: investigating portals for information resources and learning. Final project report

INSPIRAL's aims were to identify and analyse, from the perspective of the UK HE learner, the nontechnical, institutional and end-user issues with regard to linking VLEs and digital libraries, and to make recommendations for JISC strategic planning and investment. INSPIRAL's objectives -To identify key stakeholders with regard to the linkage of VLEs, MLEs and digital libraries -To identify key stakeholder forum points and dissemination routes -To identify the relevant issues, according to the stakeholders and to previous research, pertaining to the interaction (both possible and potential) between VLEs/MLEs and digital libraries -To critically analyse identified issues, based on stakeholder experience and practice; output of previous and current projects; and prior and current research -To report back to JISC and to the stakeholder communities, with results situated firmly within the context of JISC's strategic aims and objectives

HPC Cloud for Scientific and Business Applications: Taxonomy, Vision, and Research Challenges

High Performance Computing (HPC) clouds are becoming an alternative to on-premise clusters for executing scientific applications and business analytics services. Most research efforts in HPC cloud aim to understand the cost-benefit of moving resource-intensive applications from on-premise environments to public cloud platforms. Industry trends show hybrid environments are the natural path to get the best of the on-premise and cloud resources---steady (and sensitive) workloads can run on on-premise resources and peak demand can leverage remote resources in a pay-as-you-go manner. Nevertheless, there are plenty of questions to be answered in HPC cloud, which range from how to extract the best performance of an unknown underlying platform to what services are essential to make its usage easier. Moreover, the discussion on the right pricing and contractual models to fit small and large users is relevant for the sustainability of HPC clouds. This paper brings a survey and taxonomy of efforts in HPC cloud and a vision on what we believe is ahead of us, including a set of research challenges that, once tackled, can help advance businesses and scientific discoveries. This becomes particularly relevant due to the fast increasing wave of new HPC applications coming from big data and artificial intelligence.Comment: 29 pages, 5 figures, Published in ACM Computing Surveys (CSUR

Information strategy development in the UK and Ireland: a role for Aleph

This paper looks at the role of the Ex Libris Strategy Group of UK and Irish Chief Librarians. It then analyses the role of Information provision at a strategic level in Universities in the UK. The paper identifies a Top Ten Wish List for development and partnership working with Ex Libris, comprising: Back to Basics, the Corporate Context, E-Journals, E-Books, Open Access, OAI compliance, the Catalogue, Management Information, Virtual and Managed Learning Environments, and international developments in information provision. The paper concludes that libraries must: support the institutional Mission, be seen to deliver, support their customers, and be cost-effective. Ex Libris software and products have an important role to play in delivering this agenda

Usability of Web-based Knowledge Portals to support Research Organizations

Usability refers to the effectiveness, efficiency and user satisfaction of a designed product or system. One of the most of productive ways of measuring usability goals is through questionnaires and surveys. In this paper, we discuss usability related issues from a users’ perspective in the design analysis of a web-based knowledge portal that was developed to support the knowledge management activities of an educational research organization. The original portal system initially experienced high levels of user participation. However in recent times, this trend had been reversed with flagging log-in access rates. Consequently, a criterion-based usability survey instrument was designed and implemented online to gather users’ responses and comments. The survey outcomes indicated that a large number of respondents used the portal sporadically with a significant number being completely unaware of many of its services. Thus based upon this feedback, the existing portal was revamped to ensure a more user-centric design model that focused on the cornerstone aspects of user control, ease of navigation, personalization services and clarity in visual presentation of information.Usability refers to the effectiveness, efficiency and user satisfaction of a designed product or system. One of the most of productive ways of measuring usability goals is through questionnaires and surveys. In this paper, we discuss usability related issues from a users’ perspective in the design analysis of a web-based knowledge portal that was developed to support the knowledge management activities of an educational research organization. The original portal system initially experienced high levels of user participation. However in recent times, this trend had been reversed with flagging log-in access rates. Consequently, a criterion-based usability survey instrument was designed and implemented online to gather users’ responses and comments. The survey outcomes indicated that a large number of respondents used the portal sporadically with a significant number being completely unaware of many of its services. Thus based upon this feedback, the existing portal was revamped to ensure a more user-centric design model that focused on the cornerstone aspects of user control, ease of navigation, personalization services and clarity in visual presentation of information

Usability of Web-based Knowledge Portals to support Research Organizations

Usability refers to the effectiveness, efficiency and user satisfaction of a designed product or system. One of the most of productive ways of measuring usability goals is through questionnaires and surveys. In this paper, we discuss usability related issues from a users’ perspective in the design analysis of a web-based knowledge portal that was developed to support the knowledge management activities of an educational research organization. The original portal system initially experienced high levels of user participation. However in recent times, this trend had been reversed with flagging log-in access rates. Consequently, a criterion-based usability survey instrument was designed and implemented online to gather users’ responses and comments. The survey outcomes indicated that a large number of respondents used the portal sporadically with a significant number being completely unaware of many of its services. Thus based upon this feedback, the existing portal was revamped to ensure a more user-centric design model that focused on the cornerstone aspects of user control, ease of navigation, personalization services and clarity in visual presentation of information.Usability refers to the effectiveness, efficiency and user satisfaction of a designed product or system. One of the most of productive ways of measuring usability goals is through questionnaires and surveys. In this paper, we discuss usability related issues from a users’ perspective in the design analysis of a web-based knowledge portal that was developed to support the knowledge management activities of an educational research organization. The original portal system initially experienced high levels of user participation. However in recent times, this trend had been reversed with flagging log-in access rates. Consequently, a criterion-based usability survey instrument was designed and implemented online to gather users’ responses and comments. The survey outcomes indicated that a large number of respondents used the portal sporadically with a significant number being completely unaware of many of its services. Thus based upon this feedback, the existing portal was revamped to ensure a more user-centric design model that focused on the cornerstone aspects of user control, ease of navigation, personalization services and clarity in visual presentation of information

Book Review--- e-Government:The Science of the Possible

This book has been divided into 12 chapters looking at the interlinking of topics on e-Governance. These topics include (among others) -- i) The introduction to e-Government, ii) Vision of e-governance, iii) Architecture or e-governance infrastructure of different countries and a special reference to the AP portal, iv) The PPT, PPP and e-Government readiness, technology and standards, v) Security for e-government, the digital divide, e-government and cyberlaw.e-Governance