A good hub centre will effectively help expand agglomeration economy effects and increase competitive advantages for global shipping carrier-based logistics service providers (GSLPs). Hence, the selection of hub location of logistics centre is very important for the GSLP companies. In light of this, the main purpose of this paper is to develop an integrated fuzzy MCDM model to evaluate the best...

Cloud computing offers a prominent service for data storage and it refers to a broad set of technologies, policies and controls deployed to provide security for data and applications. As more businesses move to the cloud, security is a leading concern in the cloud environment, it’s essential that companies work with partners that understand best practices of cloud security and provide transpare...

Renting software applications from an application service provider is generally assumed to provide significant overall cost savings. Whether these savings benefit the customer or provide high profit margins for the provider is a priori not clear. Lock-in of customers might reduce competition and enable the service provider to charge premium prices. We investigate in this paper the strength of l...

The current financial crisis forces companies to allocate IT budgets more effectively and thus increases the demand for suitable methods to evaluate the financial impact of IT investments. This especially applies to service-orientation, a design paradigm which facilitates the standardisation and flexibilisation of business processes and IT applications, topics that currently are very much in vo...

This paper presents an analysis and configuration methodology for video-on-demand services. Usually, two entities take part in this kind of services: a network operator and a content provider. The former provides an Internet connection and manages servers and proxies, whereas the latter generates the provided contents. All their possibilities of configuration must be based on an accurate servic...

Universities have severe difficulties in using elearning applications successfully due to organizational problems to provide them. Providing a web-based learning environment is an enormous effort not only from the didactical and organizational perspective, but also from an administrative and technical point of view. In this paper we critically review the steps taken for making a web-based learn...

Multi-sourcing as a strategy for IT outsourcing (ITO) is becoming more important. Although already identified in the early days of outsourcing, companies selected multiple providers for their IT services. The explicit management of these relations was left implicit both in practise and in research. Multi-sourcing has mostly been addressed as a competitive strategy, until now little attention ha...

This paper explores which factors contribute to a strong, IT Outsourcing (ITO) relationship. Therefore, a conceptual model has been developed and tested in four Major National Companies (MNCs), who have outsourced their IT and additionally, their IT service providers have been studied. All the involved contracts have multibillion SEK (the Swedish currency krona) turnovers and belong to top 100 ...

Companies today encounter rapid, radical and near-constant changes while customer expectations towards quality and service are increasing. It has become imperative for IT to respond and adapt to those changes. The traditional role as a simple technology provider does not fulfill the need. IT departments feel huge pressure to adapt towards a lean, responsive and service oriented organization and...

Whether to allow a broadband service provider to supplement basic best-effort service by high quality managed service at a premium price has been hotly debated, especially in the context of network neutrality. Offering managed service provides delay-sensitive customers with a better option of guaranteed quality of service, but may allow the service provider to starve the best-effort service of ...