Vállalati döntés egy új információbiztonsági eszköz, a kvantumkulcscsere bevezetéséről (Corporate decision about the installation of a new information security device the quantum key distribution)

A szerzők tanulmányukban az információbiztonság egy merőben új, minőségi változást hozó találmányával, a kvantumkulcscserével (QKD-vel – quantum key distribution) foglalkoznak. Céljuk az, hogy az újdonságra mint informatikai biztonsági termékre tekintsenek, és megvizsgálják a bevezetéséről szóló vállalati döntés során felmerülő érveket, ellenérveket. Munkájuk egyaránt műszaki és üzleti szemléletű. Előbb elkülönítik a kvantumkulcscsere hagyományos eljárásokkal szembeni használatának motiváló tényezőit, és megállapítják, milyen körülmények között szükséges a napi működésben alkalmazni. Ezt követően a forgalomban is kapható QKD-termékek tulajdonságait és gyártóit szemügyre véve megfogalmazzák a termék széles körű elterjedésének korlátait. Végül a kvantumkulcscsere-termék bevezetéséről szóló vállalati döntéshozás különböző aspektusait tekintik át. Információbiztonsági és üzleti szempontból összehasonlítják az új, valamint a hagyományosan használt kulcscsereeszközöket. Javaslatot tesznek a védendő információ értékének becslésére, amely a használatbavétel költség-haszon elemzését támaszthatja alá. Ebből levezetve megállapítják, hogy mely szervezetek alkotják a QKD lehetséges célcsoportját. Utolsó lépésként pedig arra keresik a választ, melyik időpont lehet ideális a termék bevezetésére. _____ This study aims to illuminate Quantum Key Distribution (QKD), a new invention that has the potential to bring sweeping changes to information security. The authors’ goal is to present QKD as a product in the field of IT security, and to examine several pro and con arguments regarding the installation of this product. Their work demonstrates both the technical and the business perspectives of applying QKD. First they identify motivational factors of using Quantum Key Distribution over traditional methods. Then the authors assess under which circumstances QKD could be necessary to be used in daily business. Furthermore, to evaluate the limitations of its broad spread, they introduce the vendors and explore the properties of their commercially available QKD products. Bearing all this in mind, they come out with numerous factors that can influence corporate decision making regarding the installation of QKD. The authors compare the traditional and the new tools of key distribution from an IT security and business perspective. They also take efforts to estimate the value of the pieces of information to be protected. This could be useful for a subsequent cost–benefit analysis. Their findings try to provide support for determining the target audience of QKD in the IT security market. Finally the authors attempt to find an ideal moment for an organization to invest in Quantum Key Distribution.

Mitigating congestion by integrating time forecasting and realtime information aggregation in cellular networks

An iterative travel time forecasting scheme, named the Advanced Multilane Prediction based Real-time Fastest Path (AMPRFP) algorithm, is presented in this dissertation. This scheme is derived from the conventional kernel estimator based prediction model by the association of real-time nonlinear impacts that caused by neighboring arcs’ traffic patterns with the historical traffic behaviors. The AMPRFP algorithm is evaluated by prediction of the travel time of congested arcs in the urban area of Jacksonville City. Experiment results illustrate that the proposed scheme is able to significantly reduce both the relative mean error (RME) and the root-mean-squared error (RMSE) of the predicted travel time. To obtain high quality real-time traffic information, which is essential to the performance of the AMPRFP algorithm, a data clean scheme enhanced empirical learning (DCSEEL) algorithm is also introduced. This novel method investigates the correlation between distance and direction in the geometrical map, which is not considered in existing fingerprint localization methods. Specifically, empirical learning methods are applied to minimize the error that exists in the estimated distance. A direction filter is developed to clean joints that have negative influence to the localization accuracy. Synthetic experiments in urban, suburban and rural environments are designed to evaluate the performance of DCSEEL algorithm in determining the cellular probe’s position. The results show that the cellular probe’s localization accuracy can be notably improved by the DCSEEL algorithm. Additionally, a new fast correlation technique for overcoming the time efficiency problem of the existing correlation algorithm based floating car data (FCD) technique is developed. The matching process is transformed into a 1-dimensional (1-D) curve matching problem and the Fast Normalized Cross-Correlation (FNCC) algorithm is introduced to supersede the Pearson product Moment Correlation Co-efficient (PMCC) algorithm in order to achieve the real-time requirement of the FCD method. The fast correlation technique shows a significant improvement in reducing the computational cost without affecting the accuracy of the matching process.

Marketing A Hospitality Program And Its Product

In his dialogue entitled - Marketing A Hospitality Program and Its Product - Jürgen Chopard, Dr. es Sciences (Economics) Director, Centre International de Glion, Glion, Switzerland, Dr. Chopard initially offers: “The recruitment of qualified personnel is extremely difficult in an industry with a poor image; where career paths are not well defined. The author discusses the employment of marketing management techniques to improve the positioning of hospitality education and create a more attractive perception of the hotel industry.” As outlined in the above paragraph, Dr. Chopard vectors-in on marketing strategies from two standpoints; the educational side with its focus on curriculum, and the larger, industry side with its emphasis on public perception and service. These are not necessarily, nor should they be viewed as disparate elements. “ Although some professionals may see schools of hospitality education catering to two markets, students on one hand and industry on the other, in fact, their needs should be viewed as the same and hence a single market,” Dr. Chopard says to bolster his assertion. “The marketing concept is a management orientation that holds that the key task of the organization is to determine the needs and wants of target markets and to adapt the organization to delivering the desired satisfactions more effectively and efficiently than its competitor,” the author confides, with an attribution. From these information/definition leanings, Dr. Chopard continues on a path that promotes the Centre International de Glion, Glion, Switzerland, which he is affiliated with. Why, because they endorse the same principles he is explaining to you. That’s not a bad thing. Essentially, what Dr. Chopard wants you to know is, education and business management are synonymous and therefore should share the same marketing designs and goals. “It is hard to believe that as critically important a sector as education does not use for its own management the techniques which it teaches and which have largely been proved in other fields,” the author provides as counterpoint. Since pedagogical needs so closely relate to the more pragmatic needs of the industry in general, these elements should seek to compliment and engage each other, in fact, collaboration is imperative, Dr. Chopard expresses a priori. “The cooperation of future employers is indispensable in the preparation of the product, so that it is capable of providing the expected services. The need for close relations between training establishments and the hotel and catering industry seems obvious,” Dr. Chopard says. The author reveals some flaws in hospitality marketing strategy, and then contrasts these against how a successful strategy could/should be implemented.

The Influence of Purchase Confidence on Information Source Selection: Implications for Hospitality Industry

Whether the product of choice is a restaurant, vacation resort or hotel, it is important for hospitality marketers to understand how consumers treat purchase decisions and the influence purchase confidence and situation play on that decision. This study investigated the role purchase confidence plays with knowledge in the selection of sources of information during purchase decisions. The results indicate sources of information are perceived differently by consumers and depending on the purchase situation, subjective knowledge is influenced by purchase confidence affecting the source of information considered when making a purchase decision. The results also indicated that those with high purchase confidence and subjective knowledge will rely on themselves as a source when making a purchase rather than a retail clerk or published material.

Design concept evaluation based on rough number and information entropy theory

Concept evaluation at the early phase of product development plays a crucial role in new product development. It determines the direction of the subsequent design activities. However, the evaluation information at this stage mainly comes from experts' judgments, which is subjective and imprecise. How to manage the subjectivity to reduce the evaluation bias is a big challenge in design concept evaluation. This paper proposes a comprehensive evaluation method which combines information entropy theory and rough number. Rough number is first presented to aggregate individual judgments and priorities and to manipulate the vagueness under a group decision-making environment. A rough number based information entropy method is proposed to determine the relative weights of evaluation criteria. The composite performance values based on rough number are then calculated to rank the candidate design concepts. The results from a practical case study on the concept evaluation of an industrial robot design show that the integrated evaluation model can effectively strengthen the objectivity across the decision-making processes.

Design of an information system for metrology contents

Dimensional and form inspections are key to the manufacturing and assembly of products. Product verification can involve a number of different measuring instruments operated using their dedicated software. Typically, each of these instruments with their associated software is more suitable for the verification of a pre-specified quality characteristic of the product than others. The number of different systems and software applications to perform a complete measurement of products and assemblies within a manufacturing organisation is therefore expected to be large. This number becomes even larger as advances in measurement technologies are made. The idea of a universal software application for any instrument still appears to be only a theoretical possibility. A need for information integration is apparent. In this paper, a design of an information system to consistently manage (store, search, retrieve, search, secure) measurement results from various instruments and software applications is introduced. Two of the main ideas underlying the proposed system include abstracting structures and formats of measurement files from the data so that complexity and compatibility between different approaches to measurement data modelling is avoided. Secondly, the information within a file is enriched with meta-information to facilitate its consistent storage and retrieval. To demonstrate the designed information system, a web application is implemented. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2010.

Market-oriented new product development of health promoting foods for the ageing population

Major factors influencing food development and food marketing strategies in global market places at present can be attributable to the changing age structure of the population. The significant shifts in global age structure will inevitably lead to the number of people aged 60 reaching an all-time high of one billion by the year 2020. The rapidly growing population of ageing people globally represents a large, neglected and very much under-developed category within the Food Industry. The primary focus of this study was the integration of knowledge creation techniques at early NPD stages, for the development of market-oriented new health promoting foods for the ageing population. The methodology of this study was centered on an exploratory sequential mixed methods strategy. Stage one of the study involved in-depth semi-structured interviews with 16 Stakeholders to facilitate the need identification stage of the NPD process. The main outputs identified were the need for: the fortification of foods for a preventative nutrition approach, the development of foods that targeted age-related conditions such as cognitive, heart, gut and bone health, the integration of ageing compensatory packaging adaptations and the creation of marketing messages with an active lifestyle message. Stage two consisted of a market-oriented computer assisted NPD technique, a user centered design interaction (UCD) to integrate consumers as co-creators throughout the idea generation stage of the NPD process. The most important product attributes identified in this stage included: products targeted at brain and cognitive health, liquid based beverages, easy to use packaging with environmentally friendly elements, simplistic marketing with a clear focus on health not age and realistic health claims constructed with consumer friendly terminology. Finally, Stage three used an abbreviated means-end chain (MEC) analysis to complete the concept development stage of the NPD process. This stage identified commercial information that could be used by food firms for the development of positioning and communication strategies. Equally, the information generated could be of high strategic importance to governments, policy makers, health professionals and medical professionals. The values and goals listed in this stage included: better overall health, active lifestyle, optimum nutrition and wellbeing feelings. Overall, this research illustrated that knowledge creation techniques can assist firms in the development of market-oriented health promoting foods for the ageing population.

Research in information systems: A study of diversity and inter-disciplinary discourse in the AIS basket journals between 1995 and 2011

The paper investigates how Information Systems (IS) has emerged as the product of inter-disciplinary discourses. The research aim in this study is to better understand diversity in IS research, and the extent to which the diversity of discourse expanded and contracted from 1995 to 2011. Methodologically, we apply a combined citations/co-citations analysis based on the eight Association for Information Systems basket journals and the 22 subject-field classification framework provided by the Association of Business Schools. Our findings suggest that IS is in a state of continuous interaction and competition with other disciplines. General Management was reduced from a dominant position as a reference discipline in IS at the expense of a growing variety of other discourses including Business Strategy, Marketing, and Ethics and Governance, among others. Over time, IS as a field moved from the periphery to a central position during its discursive formation. This supports the notion of IS as a fluid discipline dynamically embracing a diverse range of adjacent reference disciplines, while keeping a degree of continuing interaction with them. Understanding where IS is currently at allows us to better understand and propose fruitful avenues for its development in both academia and practice. © 2013 JIT Palgrave Macmillan All rights reserved.

A Framework to Capture and Share Knowledge Using Storytelling and Video Sharing in Global Product Development

In global engineering enterprises, information and knowledge sharing are critical factors that can determine a project’s success. This statement is widely acknowledged in published literature. However, according to some academics, tacit knowledge is derived from a person’s lifetime of experience, practice, perception and learning, which makes it hard to capture and document in order to be shared. This project investigates if social media tools can be used to improve and enable tacit knowledge sharing within a global engineering enterprise. This paper first provides a brief background of the subject area, followed by an explanation of the industrial investigation, from which the proposed knowledge framework to improve tacit knowledge sharing is presented. This project’s main focus is on the improvement of collaboration and knowledge sharing amongst product development engineers in order to improve the whole product development cycle.

Building Information Modelling in UK Construction Projects: A State of the Art Review

This paper aims to present a state-of-the-art review of the scope and practical implications of the Building Information Modelling (BIM) platform in the UK construction practice. Theoretical developments suggest that BIM is an integration of both product and process innovation, not just a disparate set of software tools. BIM provides effective collaboration, visual representation and data management, which enable the smooth flow of information throughout the project’s lifecycle. The most frequently reported benefits are related to Capital Cost (capex) and Operational costs (opex) and time savings. Key challenges, however, focus on the interoperability of software, capital installation costs, in-house experience, client preference and cultural issues within design teams and within the organisation. The paper concludes with a critical commentary on the changing roles and a process required to implement BIM in UK construction projects, and suggests areas for further research.

Completion strategy or emphasis manipulation? Task support for teaching information problem solving

While most students seem to solve information problems effortlessly, research shows that the cognitive skills for effective information problem solving are often underdeveloped. Students manage to find information and formulate solutions, but the quality of their process and product is questionable. It is therefore important to develop instruction for fostering these skills. In this research, a 2-h online intervention was presented to first-year university students with the goal to improve their information problem solving skills while investigating effects of different types of built-in task support. A training design containing completion tasks was compared to a design using emphasis manipulation. A third variant of the training combined both approaches. In two experiments, these conditions were compared to a control condition receiving conventional tasks without built-in task support. Results of both experiments show that students' information problem solving skills are underdeveloped, which underlines the necessity for formal training. While the intervention improved students’ skills, no differences were found between conditions. The authors hypothesize that the effective presentation of supportive information in the form of a modeling example at the start of the training caused a strong learning effect, which masked effects of task support. Limitations and directions for future research are presented.

Product and Process Innovation: Antecedents and Performance outcomes in small IT firms in India

Innovation is a strategic necessity for the survival of today’s organizations. The wide recognition of innovation as a competitive necessity, particularly in dynamic market environments, makes it an evergreen domain for research. This dissertation deals with innovation in small Information Technology (IT) firms in India. The IT industry in India has been a phenomenal success story of the last three decades, and is today facing a crucial phase in its history characterized by the need for fundamental changes in strategies, driven by innovation. This study, while motivated by the dynamics of changing times, importantly addresses the research gap on small firm innovation in Indian IT.This study addresses three main objectives: (a) drivers of innovation in small IT firms in India (b) impact of innovation on firm performance (c) variation in the extent of innovation adoption in small firms. Product and process innovation were identified as the two most contextually relevant types of innovation for small IT firms. The antecedents of innovation were identified as Intellectual Capital, Creative Capability, Top Management Support, Organization Learning Capability, Customer Involvement, External Networking and Employee Involvement.Survey method was adopted for data collection and the study unit was the firm. Surveys were conducted in 2014 across five South Indian cities. Small firm was defined as one with 10-499 employees. Responses from 205 firms were chosen for analysis. Rigorous statistical analysis was done to generate meaningful insights. The set of drivers of product innovation (Intellectual Capital, Creative Capability, Top Management Support, Customer Involvement, External Networking, and Employee Involvement)were different from that of process innovation (Creative Capability, Organization Learning Capability, External Networking, and Employee Involvement). Both product and process innovation had strong impact on firm performance. It was found that firms that adopted a combination of product innovation and process innovation had the highest levels of firm performance. Product innovation and process innovation fully mediated the relationship between all the seven antecedents and firm performance The results of this study have several important theoretical and practical implications. To the best of the researcher’s knowledge, this is the first time that an empirical study of firm level innovation of this kind has been undertaken in India. A measurement model for product and process innovation was developed, and the drivers of innovation were established statistically. Customer Involvement, External Networking and Employee Involvement are elements of Open Innovation, and all three had strong association with product innovation, and the latter twohad strong association with process innovation. The results showed that proclivity for Open Innovation is healthy in the Indian context. Practical implications have been outlined along how firms can organize themselves for innovation, the human talent for innovation, the right culture for innovation and for open innovation. While some specific examples of possible future studies have been recommended, the researcher believes that the study provides numerous opportunities to further this line of enquiry.

Using Information, Metrics and Developing Business Cases for L&D

The second theme of this book concerns L&D’s ‘Contributions’, specifically how L&D professionals articulate, communicate and demonstrate value that it brings to the organization. Specifically, Chapter 3, titled ‘Using information, metrics and developing business cases for L&D’, discusses how L&D professionals can do this using the business case as a vehicle. The business case is a tool that L&D professionals can use to show how new L&D initiatives can benefit the organization and its stakeholders. The value of such benefit can be ‘articulated’ quantitatively and qualitatively. Chapter 3 adopts a holistic approach in developing a business case. L&D professionals must be competently knowledgeable about accounting and finance but without the need to be experts – as their expertise lies in L&D. Therefore to successfully complete a business case, L&D professionals need to form teams comprising the right members (depending on what the business case is about). The political realities that are associated with the development of a business case can be important considerations. How well L&D is able to ‘sell’ a business case depends on how well it is framed, usually either as a problem or opportunity. We then discuss the information, data and metrics required to build a typical business case, specifically in terms of identifying the benefits and costs. The chapter concludes with some suggestions on how the findings from the business case can be presented in infographics-inspired form.

The Influence of Informational and Emotional Advertising Appeals on Advertising Effectiveness – Consumers’ Perspective on the Over-the-Counter Product Advertisements in Finland

Consumers face enormous amounts of promotional messages daily whereas the pharmaceutical companies among other industries spend considerable time and money developing effective advertising strategies. There are multiple possible ways to appeal the target customer in order to increase the effectiveness of the advertisement. In spite of the various possibilities to categorize persuasive communication, the informational and the emotional appeals are the typical approaches. This study assesses the influence of the informational and emotional advertising appeals on the advertising effectiveness in the context of OTCs in Finland. The research method applied in this study is a quantitative survey. The data consists of 461 responses from the target population of 18–80 years old Finnish speaking consumers. The results from the marketing research indicate that the positive correlations of the emotional appeals are much stronger than the positive correlations of the informational appeals relating to the advertising effectiveness. However, on average the Finnish consumers experience the OTC advertisements relying on the informational appeals more effective than the OTC advertisements relying on the emotional appeals. Furthermore, within emotional appeals there is a much greater variety in the experienced advertising effectiveness not providing as stabile and consistent experienced advertising effectiveness compared to the informational appeals. Thus, the OTC advertisement relying more on the emotional appeals are much more risky in terms of advertising effectiveness. There are also differences with the experienced advertising effectiveness between the Finnish consumer groups and the information can be utilised when designing tailored OTC advertisements. The Finnish men consider humorous advertisements more effective than the Finnish women. In addition, the people living outside Uusimaa Region experience higher advertising effectiveness with the advertisements relying more on the informational advertisements compared to the people living in Uusimaa Region. In similar vein, the people with lower education experience higher advertising effectiveness with the advertisements relying more on the informational advertisements compared to the people with high education. Additionally, the older generation perceive an OTC advertisement with a middle-aged celebrity more effective than the younger consumers

A Scalable Design Framework for Variability Management in Large-Scale Software Product Lines

Variability management is one of the major challenges in software product line adoption, since it needs to be efficiently managed at various levels of the software product line development process (e.g., requirement analysis, design, implementation, etc.). One of the main challenges within variability management is the handling and effective visualization of large-scale (industry-size) models, which in many projects, can reach the order of thousands, along with the dependency relationships that exist among them. These have raised many concerns regarding the scalability of current variability management tools and techniques and their lack of industrial adoption. To address the scalability issues, this work employed a combination of quantitative and qualitative research methods to identify the reasons behind the limited scalability of existing variability management tools and techniques. In addition to producing a comprehensive catalogue of existing tools, the outcome form this stage helped understand the major limitations of existing tools. Based on the findings, a novel approach was created for managing variability that employed two main principles for supporting scalability. First, the separation-of-concerns principle was employed by creating multiple views of variability models to alleviate information overload. Second, hyperbolic trees were used to visualise models (compared to Euclidian space trees traditionally used). The result was an approach that can represent models encompassing hundreds of variability points and complex relationships. These concepts were demonstrated by implementing them in an existing variability management tool and using it to model a real-life product line with over a thousand variability points. Finally, in order to assess the work, an evaluation framework was designed based on various established usability assessment best practices and standards. The framework was then used with several case studies to benchmark the performance of this work against other existing tools.