Creating Individual Journal Rankings Based on a Community Approach

Selecting appropriate publication outlets is crucial to any researcher. Journal rankings can be used to guide the selection, but their usefulness may be limited for particular audiences. In this paper, it is argued that especially young researchers and researchers in interdisciplinary fields can benefit from targeting research efforts to a specific community. This can be facilitated by an individually built journal ranking that exploits a community building perspective and by a more transparent process of use. The approach introduced here is based on an analysis of both traditional journal rankings and behavior of academic communities. As a result, we present a procedure for building and us…

Integrated Domain Model for Digital Rights Management

Digital Rights Management (DRM) is an issue of controlling and managing digital rights over intellectual property. It has recently broadened its scope from being merely a content protection concern to description, identification, trading, protection, monitoring and tracking of rights over tangible or intangible assets. In our study we found out an essential problem of the domain: lack of models on an appropriate level of abstraction needed to support research and system development. Modelling, identifying and describing the core entities enable the rights management functionalities. This chapter contributes in recognizing the principal entities and providing detailed description on current …

Towards Measuring the Agility of Software Business

Agile development methods have been employed across the software industry. However, it is not always clear if the used methods actually help the software firms in being more agile and if agility has a positive influence in the software firm performance. Studying these questions may turn out impossible since good measurements for assessing the overall agility of software firms do not yet exist. A need is therefore detected to measure the differences in agility between firms and finding the means to evaluate the differences in agility in reliable manner. This article examines how to measure the agility of a software firm and reports initial steps in the process of developing measurement instr…

Analyzing the Current Phase of the OSS/BSS Software Market

In this section, the evolution of the OSS/BSS software industry is described, and the current phase of the OSS/BSS software market is analyzed using quantitative data. The first analysis uses the viewpoint of the general industry lifecycle stage models. This is followed by an analysis from the viewpoint of the vertical software market evolution model. The last section analyses the mergers and acquisitions of the OSS/BSS market from the last few years.

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Overview of Telecom Operator Software Market

Telecommunications is an essential enabler of modern societies and a global vertical industry, providing communication and information services, with its annual revenue of over trillion euros. In this book, a company providing these services is referred to as a telecom operator or communications service provider (CSP). CSPs create value by offering connectivity to and via an infrastructure of networks for transferring signals. The core business processes in a telecom operator company therefore revolve, on one hand, around physical networks and their maintenance, and on the other, managing their customers and their use of the connectivity services over the networks.

Software Business in the Telecommunications Sector

Operations and Business Support Systems (OSS/BSS) software of Communication Service Providers (CSP's) can be developed internally within the CSP or acquired from a Software Vendor. The software industry lifecycle model hypothesizes that software development is internal in the beginning of the industry's lifecycle, and that the share of external products increases when it matures. Empirical evidence shows signs of the OSS/BSS software industry approaching maturity. Current and future developments of the industry include the possibilities of utilizing the Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) model and Open Source software (OSSw). Both have gained increasing interest by the CSP's. However, the relativ…

Software-as-a-Service in the Telecommunication Industry: Problems and Opportunities

This paper examines the telecommunication software market and the adoption of topical Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) model in this vertical market. The aim of this paper is to estimate which telecommunication software products are likely to be provided as a Service, and to examine the potential factors disallowing SaaS adoption. The set aim is pursued by studying both the supplying software vendors and the communication service providers (CSP) as customers. A set of thematic interviews, software industry statistics and information disclosed by the software vendors are used in the analysis. The results of the analysis reveal challenges in adopting SaaS for telecommunication software as well as…

Examining business models of Software-as-a-Service companies

Adoption of Open Source Software and Software-as-a- Service Models in the Telecommunication Industry

A case research is carried out on adoption of open source software (OSS) and software-as-a-service (SaaS) in the telecommunication industry. The study was conducted to examine the types of software deployed as OSS and SaaS and the conditions of adopting OSS and SaaS. Findings of the case study indicate that industry-specific software is not developed as OSS or deployed in SaaS mode. Based on the findings, we also arrive at conclusion: Adoption is hindered by specificity of processes and technology interfaces.

Advantages of Public Cloud Infrastructure in Different Technology Adoption Lifecycle Stages

Independent software vendors (ISV) utilize cloud infrastructure for different reasons. We hypothesize that the motivation to adopt cloud infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) changes as the ISV’s product is getting adopted by the market. In this paper we consider how the infrastructure needs of ISVs change along the stages of ISV product’s adoption lifecycle, and analyze the potential benefits of utilizing IaaS in different stages. The analysis is illustrated with the cases of ISV firms with documented use of IaaS. These cases support the hypothesis that different benefits of IaaS are gaining importance along the adoption lifecycle.

Examining the Competencies of the Chief Digital Officer

Network Analysis of Platform Ecosystems: The Case of Internet of Things Ecosystem

Software platform providers are often seen as the cornerstone of their business ecosystem, where the other ecosystem players utilize the platform’s standardized components together with complementary components for making applications. These platforms are also becoming a cornerstone of the emerging Internet of Things (IoT) business ecosystem comprised of the companies who provide Internet-enabled devices, applications, connectivity solutions, and the platforms for the IoT usage. While a number of enabling technologies for IoT is available, the question remains what kind of ecosystem emerges around IoT platform providers and whether this ecosystem is evolving in line with the theoretical mod…

Advantages of Public Cloud Infrastructure in Different Technology Adoption Lifecycle Stages

Independent software vendors (ISV) utilize cloud infrastructure for different reasons. We hypothesize that the motivation to adopt cloud infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) changes as the ISV’s product is getting adopted by the market. In this paper we consider how the infrastructure needs of ISVs change along the stages of ISV product’s adoption lifecycle, and analyze the potential benefits of utilizing IaaS in different stages. The analysis is illustrated with the cases of ISV firms with documented use of IaaS. These cases support the hypothesis that different benefits of IaaS are gaining importance along the adoption lifecycle. peerReviewed

Managerial Growth Challenges in Small Software Firms: A Multiple-Case Study of Growth-Oriented Enterprises

Notwithstanding the importance of small software firms, research focusing on understanding the growth challenges faced by their management is close to non-existent. By taking a life-cycle approach and focusing on managerial challenges, the aim of this paper is to analyze the growth process of small software firms. After forming a synthesis of possible growth challenges from relevant literature, the results are reflected upon case software firms using thematic interviews and questionnaires. According to the analysis of four software firms, managing human resources represents the greatest challenge for software services firms. Additionally, other challenges stem from competition and sales-rel…

Defining an Internet-of-Things Ecosystem

By bringing the Internet connectivity to the things, the Internet-of-Things (IoT) promises a number of benefits to its customers, varying from faster and more accurate sensing of our environment, to more cost-efficient tracking of industrial processes. Likewise, from the business perspective, the wide adoption of IoT is expected to generate significant revenues to the providers of IoT application and services. The IoT adoption depends on whether the ecosystems of the companies focusing on IoT technologies would emerge and succeed in delivering to the market the solutions attractive to the customers. Therefore, it is of utmost importance to understand the essence and constituents of IoT ecos…

Impact of Cloud Computing Technologies on Pricing Models of Software Firms – Insights from Finland

In this paper we study the changes in the pricing models of software firms that use cloud computing technologies as part of their products and services. This paper presents findings from 324 responses to a questionnaire survey on how pricing model elements of software firms have changed as a result of adopting hardware virtualization, multi-tenancy, online delivery and configurability. The findings suggest that Software-as-a-Service firms – making use of the cloud computing technologies – are generally simplifying their pricing model, increasing the use of usage-based pricing, reducing the customers’ influence and unifying their pricing across customers. These changes occur together with st…

Scenarios on Adoption of Open Source Software in the Communications Software Industry

We examine the trends and developments affecting the adoption of open source software in the communications software industry. Based on expert interviews and scenario analysis, four alternative and possibly co-existing scenarios are derived. The analysis suggests that communication service providers will mostly deploy open source software in infrastructure software. Alternative developments include use of open source software in launching new services and in cloud computing. The present study is relevant particularly for technology managers considering open source strategies.

Current Software-as-a-Service Business Models: Evidence from Finland

This paper characterizes the business models of Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) firms based on their value proposition, customer segments, revenue streams, and customer relationship, and analyzes interconnections of these business model elements. The target set of 163 Finnish SaaS and ASP firms was first compared to other software firms and then clustered into four clusters based on indicator data of their business model elements. The comparison reveals that the SaaS and ASP firms have smaller customer and transaction sizes than software firms in general. The resulting classification reveals two different configurations, a pure-play SaaS model and an enterprise SaaS model, and the typical fact…

Examining Business Models of Software-as-a-Service Firms

The paper focuses the attention to different business models and intended strategic aims of the firms providing Software-as-a-Service (SaaS). SaaS vendors have been said to challenge the business practices of the existing vendors providing proprietary or customer-specific solutions. The current studies on the topic have shown that SaaS is different from preceding software business models, but consider and emphasize SaaS business model as an invariable configuration. This case study compares two SaaS firms with different backgrounds and reveals characteristics of two very different SaaS business models. The findings indicate that along with SaaS vendors providing only standard software appli…

Market scope of vendors in the OSS software market

This paper studies the market scope of vendors that produce software for telecommunications operators, i.e. the Operations Support Systems (OSS) market. The aim is to find out the strategies used by vendors in the OSS market. The market scope is studied on two dimensions: 1) the breadth of the scope in the OSS market; and 2) focus on the telecommunications industry. The breadth of market scope is divided into four categories: niche, vertical, layer and broad scope. We examine empirical vendor data from the years 2002 and 2005. Results show that all hypothesized strategies are present in the market. Most of the firms have either a niche, a vertical or a broad market scope, and they are speci…

Software Business in the Telecommunications Sector