PPS im IT-Servicemanagement: Möglichkeiten und Grenzen für die Provisionierung standardisierter Services

Zusammenfassung: Steigender Kostendruck und zunehmende Dienstleistungsorientierung erfordern ein Umdenken beim Einsatz von Methoden zum Management der Provisionierung von IT-Services. Wurden in der Vergangenheit primär Projektmanagementmethoden genutzt, rücken mit zunehmender Servicestandardisierung Methoden aus der Sachgüterfertigung in den Mittelpunkt. Im Beitrag wird dargestellt, welche Möglichkeiten und Grenzen industrielle Produktionsplanungsund -steuerungssysteme (PPS-Systeme) für die Provisionierung von IT-Services aufweisen. Das Beispiel der Global Delivery Unit SAP Services der T-Systems Enterprise Services GmbH veranschaulicht die Anwendung eines PPS-Systems im IT-Servicemanagemen

Competition of Fixed and Mobile Broadband - Separate Markets, Overlap or Takeover?

Mutual effects between fixed and mobile broadband technologies remain up to this date largely unexplored. The few studies on this subject produce partially contradictory results. Diffusion oriented analysis approaches focused on cross-product effects on growth. Mutual effects on the market potential level have not been studied. In this article we develop and apply two diffusion models, which cover partial market overlap and takeover. We carry out linear and nonlinear regressions with data on country-level broadband adoption. A comparison of the results provides two main implications. (1.) Mobile broadband adoption is stimulated by a high level of broadband adoption; reverse effects on fixed broadband growth are not significant. (2.) A portion of the fixed broadband market capacity is taken over by mobile broadband services. This reduces the untapped market potential of fixed broadband. The results motivate further analyses of moderators for cross-product effects such as demographic and market-oriented country characteristics

Distribution of Cost Over the Application Lifecycle - A Multi-Case Study

IT management focuses on planning and developing new IT solutions. The importance of production (operation, support, maintenance) and further development of existing solutions is often neglected, although these tasks are responsible for the majority of today’s IT costs. The paper presents the results of a survey of the life cycle costs of 30 IT application systems. Within the survey, the distribution of costs over the application life cycle was recorded and evaluated. The results show the central importance of recurring costs for production and further development. For a production time of 5 years these costs amounted to 79% of all life cycle costs, whereas only 21% of the costs were incurred during the planning and initial development stages. Further findings include an evaluation of the poor quality of the cost data and the important role of business units as service providers

Vertical Platform Interaction on the Internet: How ISPS and CDNS Interact

Contend delivery networks (CDN) are important players on the Internet. They provide services towebsites that improve the quality of service (QoS) and provide end users (EU) with a betterexperience, i.e. faster loading web pages. CDNs can be seen as platforms that cater for two distinctgroups of customers. On the one side, they have content providers (CP), i.e. web sites; on the otherside they need to collaborate with Internet service providers (ISP) to reach EUs. We construct aformal model that demonstrates the pricing decisions of ISPs and CDNs and contrast it to thestandard types of pricing Internet access and traffic. As a modelling tool we use theory on two-sidedmarkets and bottleneck platforms. We find that ISPs have relatively high market power and extractprofits from CDNs to compete for EUs

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

Produkt-und serviceorientiertes IT-Controlling am Fallbeispiel T-Systems ActiveBilling

Zusammenfassungen: Die zunehmende Bedeutung der IT-Produktorientierung und voranschreitende Übertragung industrieller Produktionskonzepte auf die IT hat eine Neuausrichtung des Controllings und speziell der Kosten- und Erlösrechnung notwendig gemacht. Stand bisher das Projektcontrolling bei vielen Unternehmen im Vordergrund, so hat die konsequente Markt- und Kundenorientierung einen Wandel in Richtung IT-Produktcontrolling bewirkt. Diesem Umschwung müssen Controlling-Systeme gerecht werden und neu entstehende Kostenstrukturen abbilden. Der Beitrag beschäftigt sich mit der Konstruktion einer produkt- und kundenorientierten Kostenrechnung für IT-Dienstleister. Am Praxisbeispiel der T-Systems ActiveBilling GmbH & Co. KG wird anschaulich dargestellt, wie einzelne Kontierungsobjekte zu einem funktionsfähigen Werteflussmodell kombiniert werde

Capturing Functional Affordances of Enterprise Social Software

Over the last decade, a plethora of Enterprise Social Software (ESS) has emerged in various shapes, yet difficult to compare what they enable or constrain their users to do. Neither the prior frameworks nor the ambiguous concepts shed light on the fine-granular similarities and differences among them. In particular, organizations can consciously design and adjust their ESS artifacts. Hence, it is relevant to assess the possibilities for goal-oriented action they offer and spot the differences among them. Following a structured method, we identify eight distinct dimensions with subordinate characteristics that enable the classification of functional affordances of ESS. This paper presents the resulting taxonomy that has been built and evaluated over six iterations. We contribute to practice by supporting practitioners to assess ESS, inspire the innovation of existing ESS and the development of future ESS. Furthermore, we build a foundation for future research to systematically develop and investigate ESS

The Generative Capacity of Digital Artifacts: A Mapping of the Field

The concept of generativity as the capacity of a technology or a system to be malleable by diverse groups of actors in unanticipated ways has recently gained considerable traction in information systems research. We review a sample of the body of knowledge and identify that scholars commonly investigated generativity in conjunction with digital infrastructures and digital platforms, both of which are complex, networked, and evolving socio-technical systems. Interestingly, other types of digital artifacts have been neglected, despite our initial assumption that the distinct attributes (e.g., reprogrammability, distributedness) of any digital artifact match well with generativity. The literature review also reveals that innovation brought about heterogeneous groups of actors is universally regarded as the goal of generativity, discounting the possibility of exploiting generative systems towards other valuable ends such as organizational agility. Furthermore, scholars commonly discuss generativity in conjunction with the logic of modularity, leading to unresolved questions on how these two concepts might complement each other. Another important contribution of this paper is the systematization of various meanings of generativity, spanning from the philosophical–e.g., generative mechanisms in critical realist research–to a more literal understanding, for instance generativity as synonym to ‘creation of a particular solution’

Defining Archetypes of E-Collaboration for Product Development in The Automotive Industry

The automotive industry represents one of the most relevant industrial sectors of the global economy. In response to a plethora of challenges, e-collaboration for product development has become a nexus of competitive advantage in the automotive world. Since new dynamics in organizational forms on the one hand and advancements in engineering information systems on the other hand have led to increased complexity, a classification model to organize and structure the manifold manifestations seems analytically useful. Hence, the paper at hand (1) proposes, (2) describes, and (3) validates archetypes of e-collaboration for product development in the automotive industry. Anchored in (1) a structured literature review and (2) rich empirical evidence from a multiple-case study in the automotive ecosystem, we organize our research study along a well-established, two-stage research method on archetypes adopting a socio-technical systems perspective. Key findings include the archetypes (1) mechanical development-dominant, (2) software development-dominant, (3) systems engineering-oriented, and (4) non-development-focused e-collaborations for product development as basic patterns. Thereby, “importance of mechanical development” and “importance of software development” act as essential classification dimensions. Keeping the inherent limitations of the qualitative research tradition in mind, this paper offers theoretical, methodological, managerial, and cross-disciplinary contributions