The influence of SOA governance mechanisms on IT flexibility and service reuse

While many firms have introduced SOA, only one in five have achieved anticipated benefits such as increased IT flexibility or reuse. Industry analysts assume that a lack of SOA governance is the main reason why SOA projects fail. Addressing the substantial research gap on SOA governance this paper theoretically and empirically investigates which SOA governance mechanisms are needed to achieve the benefits of SOA, such as increasing IT flexibility and reusing services. The proposed theoretical SOA governance model is evaluated using data from 81 SOA-using organizations.Overall, the results confirm the relevance of a variety of SOA governance mechanisms (structures, processes, and employees/relations), but at the same time, that IT infrastructure flexibility and service reuse are influenced by different mechanisms. Key governance mechanisms that show a strong effect on infrastructure flexibility are using standards, service management processes, educating employees, and IT/business communication while reuse can only be increased through service management, standards and qualification. Contrary to expectations, implementing new, dedicated decision-making bodies for SOA hampers organizations in achieving higher degrees of IT flexibility and reuse, and a firm is better off using existing IT decision-making bodies.     

Effective information technology (IT) governance mechanisms: An IT outsourcing perspective

Effective IT governance will ensure alignment between IT and business goals. Organizations with ineffective IT governance will suffer due to poor performance of IT resources such as inaccurate information quality, inefficient operating costs, runaway IT project and even the demise of its IT department. This study seeks to examine empirically the individual IT governance mechanisms that influence the overall effectiveness of IT governance. Furthermore, this study examines the relationship of effective IT governance, the extent of IT outsourcing decisions within the organizations, and the level of IT Intensity in the organizations. We used structural equation modeling analysis to examine 110 responses from members of ISACA (Information Systems and Audit Control Association) Australia in which their organizations have outsourced their IT functions. Results suggest significant positive relationships between the overall level of effective IT governance and the following mechanisms: the involvement of senior management in IT, the existence of ethic or culture of compliance in IT, and corporate communication systems.     

The Effect of IT Governance Maturity on IT Governance Performance

There are several best practice based frameworks that detail effective arrangements for the internal structure of an IT organization. Although it is reasonable that there is a correlation between the quality of the internal structure of an IT organization – labeled IT governance maturity, and the external impact of the same IT organization on the business – labeled IT governance performance, this has not been validated. The results, based on 35 case studies, confirm the hypotheses of a positive correlation between IT governance maturity and IT governance performance. Among IT processes described in 34 references, the internal structure of the IT organization, clearly defined organizational structures and relationships, mature quality management, and cost allocation show the strongest positive correlation to IT governance performance. The maturity of project management and service level management, as well as performance and capacity management, show almost no correlation to IT governance performance. The findings can be used to improve current frameworks for IT governance.     

IT Governance of Dutch Municipalities and Digital Information Management

Digitalization of information management has changed the archives sector in a short period of time and has significant implications for information processes within governmental organizations. In this article, the governance of such organizations is looked at from a business information technology (IT) alignment driven perspective, based on a case study conducted within two Dutch municipalities. The study shows that mature IT governance can have positive effects on digital document information management, because it leads to “desirable behavior in the use of IT.” Comparing the two municipalities, several findings become apparent. These concern effective management of input, for example through successful cooperation, and effective management of output of IT, for example by providing the needed digital services to citizens. Findings also are presented regarding the conjoint development of strategies by business and IT, mainly concerning the involvement of IT in decision making. Finally, findings surface concerning the positioning of decision-making authority, and whether that is clear to the personnel.     

IT service climate,antecedents and IT service quality outcomes: Some initial evidence

Although many IT service management frameworks exist, we still have limited theoretical understanding of IT service quality within a broader nomological network. Building on recent conceptual work on the IT service climate construct, this study empirically establishes it as a predictor of IT service quality using survey data from both IT units and their clients. Also examined was a set of antecedents which provide a foundation upon which a favorable service climate can be built. The IT service climate instrument, when incorporated into employee feedback initiatives, can provide guidance to IT executives about practices to improve service quality.     

IT Outsourcing Impacts on Enterprise Architecture

Enterprises outsource IT for many reasons, such as reducing costs, shedding of overhead functions that divert management attention away from the core business, and obtaining services from industry leaders specializing in the associated competencies. IT sourcing profoundly impacts the client organization's enterprise architecture. In an outstanding scenario, IT services come from an external services provider. Moreover, the client and vendor interact through an interorganizational interface containing operational, technical, and business components. This interface involves two major modes of interaction: delivery of the IT services and the service-management framework. The interface describes all of the processes, procedures, and protocols that the client and provider use to interact. Because enterprise architectures are unique to organizations, designing this interface might involve customization. For a large, complex client enterprise, bringing the business, operational, and technical components of the interface into alignment is often a nontrivial challenge     

Dynamics of value co-creation in complex IT service engagements

The hallmark of service—value co-creation—is not easy to achieve in B2B IT service engagements. Typically, client and provider are both complicated organizational entities with multiple agendas and diverse stakeholders, and engagements often extend over years. We analyzed a number of IT service engagements to better understand their complex dynamics, with the ultimate goal of improving their outcomes. This paper reports on our study of how value co-creation unfolds over time, and identifies basic dynamics central to the modeling of service systems—actualization of service and realization of value—that are reflected in the proposed framework.     

IT系统运维管理研究

基于ITIL服务支持管理流程的各个方面,对IT运维服务管理进行了探析,并在原有流程的基础上提出了从项目开发到最终运行全阶段的运维管理框架.该框架包括开发维护和运行维护两部分,开发阶段通过文档管理、项目动态、进度监控和知识管理将项目开发时的任务和解决方案进行记录,并控制开发进度;维护阶段按照事件管理、问题管理、配置管理和知识管理这样的流程监控系统的运行状况,快速及时地解决系统运行时的故障.IT系统通过服务台将自身的运维信息反馈到运维部门,方便了运维部门进行统一管理.     

Assessment of IT governance in organizations: A simple integrated approach

There are various methods available for dealing with IT governance. These methods are diversified, and in some cases lengthy and complicated. This paper is concerned with providing a unified simple approach for IT governance assessment. The approach is developed and tested through the following three main steps: (1) highlighting the basic requirements of IT governance considering key available methods; (2) designing the target approach that integrates these requirements and uses knowledge management principles; and (3) illustrating the use of the approach through a typical illustrative application. The approach uses the “STOPE: Strategy, Technology, Organization, People and Environment” view to integrate the issues involved, the knowledge management principles as an added value, and the six-sigma phases as a cyclic improvement process. The work provides “fifty” main IT governance controls; and these enable finding key strengths and weaknesses of IT governance in organizations from which development directions can be derived. It should be noted that considering knowledge management, and people as a main domain in the integration view, illustrate special emphasis of the human factor in IT governance.     

Developing a framework for evaluating service oriented architecture governance (SOAG)

Today, service oriented architecture (SOA) has created the opportunities to improve agility and speed in aligning business needs with information technology infrastructure. Most of the organizations in the process of applying this technology encounter with challenges and may have failure despite of spending a lot of energy and huge investments. Therefore they need to implement a service oriented framework for governance. The organizations require a framework to assess their current status of SOA governance, determine their SOA governance requirements and then offer a suitable model for their SOA governance. The aim of this study is development of a framework for evaluating SOA governance. Data collection tool is questionnaire and in order to test the proposed framework, a sample of 16 experts in the field of SOA was included. The results confirm the proposed framework. Then in order to evaluation of the confirmed framework; it was implemented in an Iranian private bank.     

企业IT治理架构构建①

针对当前企业信息化过程中所存在的问题,系统论述了企业管理和IT治理的关系,并着重分析了企业IT治理的模式,提出了企业IT治理的目标和架构。并在此基础上提出了企业IT治理架构构建的方法。     

Toward a unified framework for Cloud Computing governance: An approach for evaluating and integrating IT management and governance models

Cloud Computing is currently one of the major trends in the computer industry. It offers a wide range of both opportunities and challenges. The lack of governance causes a slowdown in the adoption process, especially with an absence of a comprehensive approach supporting the Cloud Computing governance objectives. Regarding this issue, our goal is to develop a new management and governance framework based on endorsed IT models; namely ITIL, COBIT, and ISO/IEC 27001/2. These models have been developed for different purposes and aspects of IT governance. The proposed framework is an attempt to a unified approach by taking into consideration the models’ dissimilarities. Before we go further with the final unification stage, this study's main objective is to develop both the evaluation and the integration approaches with regwards to the IT models. The results, therefore, are to shed light on the relevant outcomes emanate from an elaboration within an entirely unified CC governance framework.     

An Empirical Assessment of IT Governance Transparency: Evidence from Commercial Banking

We have developed an IT governance disclosure framework to examine how firms communicate their IT governance activities. Using this framework for a sample of 200 commercial banking firms, our empirical assessment indicates that differences in the level of disclosure are systematically related to differences in institutional settings. We also find that firms with relatively good corporate governance practices consider IT performance measurement matters to be highly important when informing and communicating with shareholders.     

Perceived information security of internal users in Indian IT services industry

Information security governance dominates the senior management’s agenda in overall organizational informance technology (IT) governance. The globalization trends encompassing all businesses, and risks of information leakage forces organizations to institute mechanisms to protect it. In order to achieve adequate level of protection, organizations implement information security management systems (ISMS). The effectiveness of ISMS depends on the implementation strength of security controls. Several studies have detailed out the qualitative nature of information security measurements and quantitative studies have always remained a challenge. This empirical study focuses on the information security perceptions of internal users of the organization on the security controls, customer influence and the support provided by the top management. The perception of internal users referred as perceived information security is measured based on the degree of confidence expressed by the internal users towards the security objectives namely, confidentiality, integrity, availability, accountability and reliability. In an attempt to align the interest of researchers and practitioners, the study surveys major developments in the field of ISMS and proposes a construct for a holistic comprehension of ‘Perceived Information Security’. The survey based research methodology focuses on the perceptions of the internal users such as Security program Implementers, Business Users and Senior Management. The findings of the study in the context of Indian IT services industry have been presented. The contributions of the research paper include providing insights into perceived information security of internal users of the organization, an empirical approach for studying perceived information security and a holistic framework for information security in Indian IT organizations.     

SOA in practice – a study of governance aspects

The academic literature on Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) governance is based on theories and assumptions rather than practices, whereas the SOA governance frameworks proposed by Information Technology (IT) vendors are made to suit their products. Research shows that the problems with SOA governance in practice are among the major reasons of SOA failures. An extensive literature review that covers SOA, IT governance and SOA governance has been carried out part of this research. The purpose of this research paper is to increase our understanding of SOA governance and to show which SOA aspects organizations should consider when adopting a SOA governance framework. Based on a literature review, this study first proposes a list of SOA aspects to be considered when implementing SOA governance. By adopting an interpretive research methodology – based on interviews with professionals and practitioners in the fields of IT governance and SOA governance – this research paper examines the importance of these aspects. The results provide a theoretical conceptualization of SOA aspects that can be used to assess SOA governance practices and provide guidance to improve them.     

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 provider.     

Influencing the effectiveness of IT governance practices through steering committees and communication policies

Information technology (IT) governance practices involve efforts by an organization's leadership to influence IT-related decisions through the location of decision rights and the structure of decision processes. Our focus is on two specific aspects of IT governance: IT steering committees and IT-related communication policies. Adopting an inductive research strategy examining qualitative data, we provide evidence on the influence of these governance practices from three small-/medium-sized organizations. While each firm evidenced a centralized IT governance posture, differences in these firms’ IT steering committees and governance-related communication policies were found to explain differences in the firms’ IT use outcomes. Inferences from our findings are presented in the form of propositions informing future research.     

A framework to identify applications of information technology to improve service quality

More and more organizations are seeking innovative ways to use information technology (IT) for strategic advantage. One way to gain this competitive edge is by differentiating the services provided to customers. This paper provides a framework to identify areas ripe for the implementation of IT to enhance and improve customer service. The framework is based upon the examination of the existing service delivery system of an organization and how applications of IT might change the interfaces among the various players (customers, employees, etc.) in the service delivery system. Further, examples are presented to illustrate how some organizations have achieved superior service quality by creatively utilizing simple IT tools.