Evaluating the Options for Business-To-Business E-Exchanges

E-commerce demands that IT managers pay just as close attention to business issues as to technical ones. What are the company's goals for the B2B E-commerce marketplace? What are the volume and size of the buyer-supplier transactions? How unique and complex are the buyer-supplier interaction processes in the firm? These are some of the key business questions IT managers must be able to answer. This article addresses these questions, as well as others, and takes an equally close look at the issues surrounding infrastructure and technology.     

Die Bedeutung des Alignment von IT und Fachressourcen in Finanzprozessen Eine empirische Untersuchung

Importance of the Alignment of IT and Business Resources in Financial Processes — An Empirical Study How do firms realize business value from deploying IT in business processes? Based on the Resource-based View and insights from recent literature on IT/business alignment, we argue that actual usage and the alignment of IT and business units are important prerequisites for a superior performance of IT-intensive business processes. In this paper, a causal model on the joint impact of IT usage, IT/business alignment and business resources on business process performance is proposed and empirically validated using data from Germany’s 1.000 largest banks. It turns out that the perceived performance of the focal business process, as predicted in the theoretical model, strongly depends on IT/business alignment. The empirical analysis also shows that business resources have a large impact and that even a superior IT cannot compensate business resource deficiencies. The results thereby provide support for important propositions of the literature on alignment from a process perspective and contribute to common knowledge that the business value of IT should not be assessed without evaluating and controlling for business resources as a complementary factor.     

Aligning the IT portfolio with business strategy: Evidence for complementarity of corporate and business unit alignment

Research on alignment between business strategy and information technology (IT) strategy has generated extensive insights over the last three decades. That research has focused primarily on the fit between business and IT strategies, while cross-domain alignment, i.e., alignment between business strategy and IT infrastructure components, has received far less attention. Further, previous studies have focused on the implications of alignment for firm performance while the effects of cross-domain alignment on business unit performance in multi-business organizations (MBOs) are yet to be examined. This issue is important as IT infrastructures are evolving rapidly. Specifically, MBOs are increasingly turning to corporate IT platforms to support a common set of shared IT needs, while still allowing individual business units to manage unique aspects of their own IT needs through local IT applications. Extending prior research, this study proposes that performance of business units in MBOs is influenced by two complementary forms of cross-domain alignment, viz., alignment between the corporate IT platform and the corporate business strategy, and alignment between the business unit’s portfolio of IT applications and its business strategy. Using data from a global survey of 120 organizations, we find evidence that complementarity between these two forms of cross-domain alignment creates a joint positive effect on business unit performance. We also find that this effect varies with the extent of process digitization within business units. Implications for theory and practice are discussed.     

MEETING THE IT CHALLENGES OF BUSINESS The Changing Mandate for MBAs

What is the implication for business when information technology (IT) changes in the workplace without a commensurate change in the composition of business programs educating tomorrow's employees? A survey of MBA graduates forms the basis of this article on the IT skills needed in the marketplace.     

服务器虚拟化的演进

本文根据ESG在2010《存储虚拟化研究过程》调查报告所撰写。ESG就1602个IT专业人士调研显示,74%北美企业级或大中机构已经部署了虚拟化,12%正在评估或者试用虚拟化技术。调研包括:目前虚拟化部署现状;截至现在物理服务器虚拟化百分比;多少不同应用在虚拟环境运营;多数虚拟机是用在生产环境还是测试研发环境服务器虚拟化和存储虚拟化的关系等问题。目前中国虚拟化市场滞后于北美市场,然而,通过虚拟化提高IT对业务的管控能力是大势所趋。ESG调查结果为中国IT决策者提供定量调查数据,在虚拟化战略决定和技术选择上做出具有前瞻性决策。     

Steady job market for IT professionals

Despite the instability in the world economy, are the ever-changing technology demands placed on businesses enough to maintain IT employment levels in the near term? What jobs are hot, and what technology specialties are waning in demand? Overall, the news is good for IT professionals. Businesses continue to need experienced employees well versed in various disciplines, especially networking and security. On the whole, analysts say, IT jobs remain stable even in flagging economic periods. IT professionals can protect themselves by learning how to think like the business side of the house     

Preconditions for putting processes back in the hands of their actors

Enterprises have now been crushed by ‘enterprise solutions’. The enterprise's information is back in the hands of the IT department. Will the same happen to the enterprise's processes? Or can computer support of those processes be put into the hands of the people who carry out the processes, who need to change them, combine them, separate them, and spread them? What properties must our business process management methods and technology have to make this possible? This paper identifies four.     

Threat Modeling: Diving into the Deep End

Optimizing the working relationship between a company's IT security (ITS) group and its internal business customers is difficult at best. Who is responsible for security? What does "responsible" mean? For that matter, what does "security" mean? If ITS is solely responsible for security, as is often the case, then everything across the board will likely receive the same level of protection. In their defense, the members of ITS often don't know which asset means the most to the business, so the safest approach is to protect everything as much as possible.     

Dynamic information technology capability: Concept definition and framework development

In a digital world, information technology (IT) units routinely update their capabilities to cope with changing business requirements and frequent technology releases. Extending the dynamic capabilities literature, this article presents the concept of dynamic IT capability, a multidimensional first-order dynamic capability that enables IT units to assist firms in appropriating business value from IT resources by influencing a set of IT-related ordinary capabilities. Scholars currently lack a dynamic capabilities framework that explains, from an IT unit’s perspective, how IT resources can be acquired, deployed, integrated, and reconfigured to fulfill business objectives. To bridge this research gap, we develop a high-level framework that highlights three constituent components of dynamic IT capability: dynamic digital platform capability, dynamic IT management capability, and dynamic IT knowledge management capability. Through an extensive literature review, we identify and summarize the set of ordinary capabilities that each dynamic IT capability component creates and reconfigures. We then offer guidance on future instrument development. To encourage further exploration of this critical construct, we close by highlighting future avenues for dynamic IT capability research.     

Proactive management of distributed organisational computing: Prevention always pays, doesn't it?

Organisations have eagerly adopted the new opportunities provided by distributed computing technology. These opportunities have also created new dependency on the technology and threats of technical problems. Information technology (IT) management has to choose its position towards these new technical risks. Should the problems be prevented proactively in advance or settled reactively afterwards? This paper draws conclusions from an action research case study aimed at proactive versus reactive end-user support. Between 1994 and 1997 one of the business units in Nokia Telecommunications required a new approach for its distributed information systems (IS) to facilitate rapid organisational growth. The distributed IS and its end-user support were established and organised during a 30-month re-engineering process. These results provide a new view to the dependencies between business processes and IT. The new distributed IT has become, often insidiously, a necessity for vital business processes. Therefore, risk management should be adopted as a standard tool for IS management to identify such dependencies. Proactive actions should be aimed at those areas where IT-related business risks are identified. Proactivity should be supplemented by reactive support to provide daily assistance for the end-users.     

新IT基础架构探讨

在互联网时代,各行业需要在"商业模式"和"体验"方面的创新,这使得IT变成了核心引擎,需要新的IT基础架构。     

The US software industry

The US software industry is a combination of survivors, successful start-ups, and companies barely getting by. What is fueling the industry's growth? First, the potential of the Internet and networked and distributed computing is immense-we have only begun to tap into the possibilities. Many of our most innovative new companies are poised to take advantage of these new technologies. Second, the business and operational components of the nation's corporations are recognizing the fundamental role that PT now plays in their success. IT organizations are not the service and support centers of the past; they are an equal partner in the overall enterprise. Finally, Americans love new technologies. The software industry provides a never-ending source of innovative toys and gadgets for home and business     

Understanding the IT/business partnership: A business process perspective

From a business process perspective, the business value of information technologies (IT) stems from how they improve or enable business processes. At the same time, in the field of strategic IT/business alignment, the locus of discussion has been how IT/business partnerships enhance the value of IT. Despite this apparent relationship, the business process perspective has been absent from the IT/business alignment discussion. In this paper, we use the case of an industrial company to develop a model for understanding IT/business partnerships in business process terms. Based on our findings, we define these partnerships by allocating responsibilities between central IT and the local business during two stages of a process lifecycle: formation and standardization. The significance of the findings lies in how the model’s configuration leads to different types of IT units’ process centricity. This in turn affects the ability of the company as a whole to transform its operations with IT.     

Road Map to the E-Revolution

Clearly, E-commerce is revolutionizing both IT and business. What may not be so evident for IT managers is the direction in which this revolution will take their organizations. This article helps IT managers determine this direction by showing how to develop a road map to chart their organizations' course through the E-revolution.     

Managing the Decentralized IT Organization

The growing trend to decentralize the IT function and move applications development to business units is often controlled by top management. A coordinated set of best practices helps IT managers take charge of change, position the IT organization as both a vendor of development services and a provider of vital infrastructure services, and ensure a logical career-enhancing structure for IT professionals.     

Strategic context and patterns of IT infrastructure capability

The importance of a firm's information technology (IT) infrastructure capability is increasingly recognised as critical to firm competitiveness. Infrastructure is particularly important for firms in industries going through dynamic change, for firms reengineering their business processes and for those with multiple business units or extensive international or geographically dispersed operations. However, the notion of IT infrastructure is still evolving and there has been little empirically based research on the patterns of IT infrastructure capability across firms.We develop the concept of IT infrastructure capability through identification of IT infrastructure services and measurement of reach and range in large, multi-business unit firms. Using empirical case research, we examine the patterns of IT infrastructure capability in 26 firms with diverse strategic contexts, including different industry bases, level of marketplace volatility, extent of business unit synergies and the nature of firm strategy formation processes. Data collection was based on a combination of quantitative and qualitative methods with multiple participants.More extensive IT infrastructure capability is defined as a combination of more IT infrastructure services and more reach and range. More extensive IT infrastructure capability was found in firms where: (i) products changed quickly; (ii) attempts were made to identify and capture synergies across business units; (iii) there was greater integration of information and IT needs as part of planning processes; and (iv) there was greater emphasis on tracking the implementation of long term strategy. These findings have implications for both business and technology managers particularly in regard to how firms link strategy and IT infrastructure formation processes.     

Road Map to the E-Revolution

Abstract

Clearly, E-commerce is revolutionizing both IT and business. What may not be so evident for IT managers is the direction in which this revolution will take their organizations. This article helps IT managers determine this direction by showing how to develop a road map to chart their organizations' course through the E-revolution.     

A methodology of constructing a decision path for IT investment

Information Technology (IT) may be used for organizational efficiency, but should also be flexible to adapt to the rapidly changing competitive business environment. In competitive business circumstances, management continually asks: (1) How flexible must the firm be in investing in IT in order to meet unknown business needs in the future? At the same time, how efficient must the firm be in order to meet current business needs?; (2) How well must the firm align its business strategy with IT investment in order for it to support its strategic goals?; (3) how to construct a decision path for IT investments with respect to flexibility, efficiency and alignment between business strategy and IT investments?Although many researchers have struggled to answer these questions, they generally provide no means for incorporating these factors into the IT investment decision process.This paper suggests a method that identifies the degree of flexibility required (α-value), and accounts for and incorporates the α-value in making IT investments. The proposed method is based on a product development method called Quality Function Deployment (QFD). It will be applied to a real case of the “H-company” in Korea to validate and evaluate the proposed methodology.     

Type-2 fuzzy sets and systems: an overview

This paper provides an introduction to and an overview of type-2 fuzzy sets (T2 FS) and systems. It does this by answering the following questions: What is a T2 FS and how is it different from a T1 FS? Is there new terminology for a T2 FS? Are there important representations of a T2 FS and, if so, why are they important? How and why are T2 FSs used in a rule-based system? What are the detailed computations for an interval T2 fuzzy logic system (IT2 FLS) and are they easy to understand? Is it possible to have an IT2 FLS without type reduction? How do we wrap this up and where can we go to learn more?     

The impact of information technology on the financial performance of diversified firms

Diversification may increase economic benefits through more efficient utilization of business resources across multiple markets. However, the benefits of these scope economies are often not realized due to costs of coordinating resources in multiple markets. Information technology (IT) is widely used to achieve more efficient coordination by reducing the costs of coordinating business resources across multiple markets. Because of the need for coordination of business resources across multiple markets, diversification can increase the demand for IT. But does increased use of IT improve the performance of diversified firms? This research tackles this question by undertaking an empirical study of the impact of IT on the financial performance resulting from diversification by focusing on the strategic direction chosen by different firms. The empirical aspects of this subject have received little attention from previous information systems (IS) and economics research. This research also sheds light on the business value of IT by showing the importance of complementarity between IT and strategy in firm performance, a subject which has also received limited attention in prior IS research.