Next-generation telco IT architectures and transformation to support service production and operation in all-IP (NGN) networks [Guest Editorial

It is widely argued that the information systems (IS) leadership function has undergone fundamental changes over the past decade. TO better understand the changes, this study compares the backgrounds, responsibilities, reporting relationships, and power of newly appointed IS executives (who had been in their position for two years or less) with established IS executives (who had been in their position for five years or more). The study found that approximately half of the new IS executives were external hires, whereas almost all of the established IS executives were promoted from within the company. More than two-thirds of the new IS executives had more than five years' experience managing a non-IS function within the past 15 years. Established IS executives had spent the majority of their career within the IS function. The activities receiving the most attention from new IS executives were information technology (IT) strategic planning and control, IT architecture management and standards development, and human resource management. For established IS executives, the activities receiving the most attention were IT architecture management and standards development, human resource management, and operations. An increasing number of new IS executives reported directly to the CEO, and almost half were members of the senior management/strategic policy committee. These findings have several important implications. First, the senior IS executive must be able to bring a broader business perspective to the position. Current senior IS executives who have not broadened their own knowledge, skills, and experiences in business strategy, management, and operations should immediately develop a personal career development program to gain these valuable perspectives. Second, senior IS executives should implement career development strategies within their own organizations that ensure that IS professionals have the opportunity to acquire the business management experience necessary to advance to higher IS management levels. Third, graduate and executive programs designed to prepare future IS managers and leaders must provide both a business and IT perspective throughout the curriculum.

The modern medical management system is influenced by modern medical concepts (value medicine, predictive medicine), on the one hand, and technologies that provide digital transformation (IoT, Big Data, blockchain, etc.), on the other hand. Digital transformation involves the implementation of fundamental changes in the activities of the organization using digital technology. At the same time, business models, medical organization development strategies, business process systems, IT architecture, services architecture, data architecture, etc., change. The object of the research is medical organizations, being the subject of research the digital transformation process of a medical organization. The hypothesis of research: the application of the architectural approach to managing the digital transformation of a medical organization will allow the formation of a reference architectural model of the upper level, as well as the upper level of the digital transformation roadmap of the medical organization. The main result of the research is the formation of the architectural model of the upper level, as well as the formation of the upper level of the transition plan during the digital transformation of the medical organization.

Operations management is the process and activity of planning, designing, and controlling the process of production and redesigning business operations in the production of products or services. It involves the responsibility of ensuring that business operations are efficient in terms of using as few resources as needed and effective in terms of meeting customer requirements. Operations management is primarily concerned with planning, organizing, and supervising in the contexts of production, manufacturing, or the provision of services. It is concerned with managing an entire production or service system which is the process that converts inputs (in the forms of raw materials, labor, consumers, and energy) into outputs (in the form of goods and/or services for consumers). Operations management involves the systematic direction and control of the processes that transform resources (inputs) into finished goods or services for customers or clients (outputs) as shown in Fig. 2.1. Operations produce products, manage quality, and create services. Operations management covers sectors like banking systems, hospitals, companies, working with suppliers, customers, and using technology. Operations is one of the major functions in an organization along with supply chains, marketing, finance, and human resources. The operations function requires management of both the strategic and day-to-day production of goods and services. In managing manufacturing or service operations, several types of decisions are made including operations strategy, product design, process design, quality management, capacity, facilities planning, production planning, and inventory control. Each of these requires an ability to analyze the current situation and find better solutions to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of manufacturing or service operations (Slack et al. 1995).

We witness a rapid increase in the number of social media streams due to development of Web2.0, IoT and Cloud Computing technology. These sources include both traditional relational databases and streaming data from messaging infrastructure. We would like to use multiple social media streams to answer complex queries to enable information sharing and intelligence gathering for better collaboration. For this purpose, we adopt data services as the basic abstraction for both traditional relational databases and data streams retrieval. A flexible continuous data service model with continuous query as service operation is proposed. Service operation instance is modeled as a view defined on data streams. In the view, data part and time synchronization part are separated from each other. Based on the continuous data service model, we proposed a continuous data service composition algorithm for answering queries across data streams and relational data. The main idea is to find the contained rewriting of user query on views satisfying both data part and time synchronization part containment relationship. We also present use case and experimental studies that indicate that the approach is effective and efficient.

Service markets and competition

The challenging economic and social issues of climate change: introduction

The purpose of the study is to summarise and present the main advantages of digitalisation as a factor in the development of organisations, in particular in the service sector. Research methods. The study used such general scientific research methods as generalization and systematisation (to distinguish approaches to the definition of digitalisation from previous studies), observation, analysis and synthesis (to specify the benefits of digitalisation in the activities of organisations), which allowed the authors to analyse the concept of “digitalisation” in the context of its impact on the development of service sector enterprises. The scientific novelty of the study is to highlight and actualize the main advantages of the impact of digitalisation on the development of the service sector. Conclusions. The current challenges facing the development of the service sector require enterprises and organisations to act following current market conditions, such as globalization and digitalisation. That is why digital transformation or digitalisation is becoming a priority area of their development. It is found that, in general, digital transformation is understood as the process of integrating digital technologies into all areas of business, which is manifested in fundamental changes in how business operates and how it brings value to consumers. It is determined that digitalisation is inherent in virtually every sphere of human activity, especially in the service sector and the provision of various services, as the Internet plays an important role and has a significant impact on the daily activities of service users around the world. Digital transformation helps to increase the efficiency, effectiveness, sustainability and innovation of service offerings by developing and delivering new types of services, engaging customers in the processes of creating and delivering services and improving their quality, etc. The article also examines such motivational factors for the transformation of various business structures as changes in consumer behaviour and expectations, digital shifts in companies, and changes in the competitive environment. It is established that the most active digitalisation is taking place in the public services sector. An example of such a transformation is the introduction of the Diia portal, which allows most of the needs of citizens and businesses to be met with electronic services. Digital transformation processes are also observed in education, healthcare, real estate, construction, finance, etc. The article highlights the main advantages of digitalisation as a factor in the development of the service sector, including improving the efficiency of communications with consumers, modernising information and communication technologies, expanding competitive advantages, improving the quality of services, optimising production costs and implementing improved business processes, developing digital literacy, developing the production of digital products and services, creating a positive image of the organisation in the market, etc. Digital transformation is one of the biggest trends of the 21st century, affecting a significant number of organisations moving forward.

Machine Learning (ML) and Artificial Intelligence (AI) can harness the immense amount of operational data from clouds to services, to social and communication networks. In the era of data science and connected devices of all varieties, Intelligence have found ways to improve operations and management of next generation networks, systems, and services. Further research is therefore needed to understand and improve the potential and suitability of ML/AI in the context of network, system, and service operations and management. This will provide deeper understanding and better decision making based on largely collected and available operational and management data. It will also present opportunities for improving ML/AI algorithms on aspects such as reliability, dependability, and scalability, as well as demonstrate the benefits of these methods in control and management systems. Moreover, there is an opportunity to define novel platforms that can harness the vast operational data and advance ML/AI algorithms to drive management decisions in open and highly programmable networks, clouds, and data centers.

Service-oriented situational data integration provides end-users an opportunity to integrate Internet-based data sources by composing data services, thereby satisfying users' immediate and personalized demands. Correlated query of multiple sources is a common way of data integration. Because it is difficult for users to select and compose services manually, an approach is proposed in this paper to automatically generate data service composition plans for correlated queries according to user requests. As the input and output parameters of the traditional Web service operations are fixed, it is hard for them to meet diverse data query requests. In our approach, data content description is added to the data service model, and a query-friendly operation is provided for data services so that their input and output parameters can be dynamically determined. An algorithm for generating composition plans according to user requests is proposed. This algorithm selects proper services based on a query request, builds up service correlations with the data content description of the services, and then generates service composition plans on the basis of the service correlations. Experiments show that the approach can obtain effective composition plans of data services with a reasonable time cost.

This paper presents a semi-automatic Web service composition approach. This approach ranks all available candidate Web service operations based on semantic annotations and suggests service operations to a human designer during the process of Web service composition. The ranking scores are based on data mediation, functionality and formal service specifications. A formal graph model, an IODAG, is defined to formalize an input/output schema of a Web service operation. Three data mediation algorithms are developed to handle the data heterogeneities arising during Web service composition. The data mediation algorithms analyze the schemas of the inputs and outputs of service operations and consider the structures of the schemas. A typed representation for our data mediation approach, which formalizes the data mediation problem as a subtype-checking problem, is presented. An evaluation is performed to study the effectiveness of different data mediation and service suggestion algorithms used to assist designers composing Web services.

In recent years services science has been an emerging discipline that aims to promote service innovation and increase service productivity by aligning scientific, management, and engineering perspectives. It emphasizes that service innovation should be able to create value for both services providers and consumers. To realize the core thinking of services science, that is, high value and high productivity, service design has to incorporate many factors into its consideration. Based on the ideas of this new research field, we develop a personalized daily-life activity recommendation service that includes information behavior, business value, and technology architecture as our service design considerations. Our service can be requested under a ubiquitous environment and include users' contextual information which is an important factor in information behavior. With regard to IT architecture, we use the service-oriented architecture (SOA) that provides the flexibility and extensiveness of technology as well as permit new innovative services to be easily added.

Cloud computing and big data: Technologies and applications

This study reveals the relationships between organizational culture and production and operations management practices in three family-run companies in southern Minas Gerais. The origins, history and contextual aspects highlight the life of these organizations, opening the perspective for considering cultural aspects present in decisions and actions, taking into account that organizational values are present in these management practices. The study of family-run company values was performed using qualitative research. It was characterized as a multi-case study using in-depth interviews with directors, founders and successors. It was ascertained that the companies studied are highlighted by organizational values that are expressed in planning, organization, direction and control management practices in relation to production and operation activities. The empirical evidence of the insertion of values in management practices demonstrates that in company operations, the directors seek to get around the impositions and determinations of administrative rationalization. The systemic nature of a set of values present in service operation and production management practices throughout the history of the studied companies reveals a family touch in relationships with clients, employees, family members and in negotiating with vendors. Key words: Family company; Management practices; Production and operations; Values.

The operations management research agenda: An update

Analysis and assessment of a knowledge based smart city architecture providing service APIs