Business Service Management

Business Service Management describes the emerging discipline dedicated to the IT-enabled management of services as corporate assets. Business Service Management deals with the service orientation of the organisation and the provisioning and use of business services. The term business service describes an autonomous transformational capability that is offered to and consumed by external or internal customers for their benefit. The prefix ‘business’ stresses that such a service has a market value, requires the ability to be managed internally as a corporate asset and that its implementation is technology-agnostic. While business services (or so called capabilities) have attracted the attention of many vendors and organisations, a lack of understanding of the activities required for the successful management of such business services remains a critical issue. In order to fill this gap, a framework consisting of Service Lifecycle Management, Service Value Management, Service Relationship Management and Service Enablement is proposed. This Framework has the potential to provide organisations with the much needed guidance in their attempts to convert current IT-driven service initiatives into successful service-centric business models.

Business service management : service and service quality

Managing service quality is of primary importance for organizations that are increasingly service oriented, and offering a growing range of services to external and internal customers. Managing service quality requires the capacity to measure service quality, concomitantly requiring explicit conceptions of ‘service’ and ‘service quality’. This white-paper explores three keys areas of service and service marketing literature: service definition and conceptualisation, service classifications, and service quality models, and make the following observations and proposals.

Business service management : understanding business models

One of the prominent topics in Business Service Management is business models for (new) services. Business models are useful for service management and engineering as they provide a broader and more holistic perspective on services. Business models are particularly relevant for service innovation as this requires paying attention to the business models that make new services viable and business model innovation can drive the innovation of new and established services. Before we can have a look at business models for services, we first need to understand what business models are. This is not straight-forward as business models are still not well comprehended and the knowledge about business models is fragmented over different disciplines, such as information systems, strategy, innovation, and entrepreneurship. This whitepaper, ‘Understanding business models,’ introduces readers to business models. This whitepaper contributes to enhancing the understanding of business models, in particular the conceptualisation of business models by discussing and integrating business model definitions, frameworks and archetypes from different disciplines. After reading this whitepaper, the reader will have a well-developed understanding about what business models are and how the concept is sometimes interpreted and used in different ways. It will help the reader in assessing their own understanding of business models and that and of others. This will contribute to a better and more beneficial use of business models, an increase in shared understanding, and making it easier to work with business model techniques and tools.

Service management and engineering in information systems research

Service research in information systems (IS) has received attention over many years (e.g. Kettinger and Lee, 1994), but more recently has increased substantially in both diversity and volume (Rai and Sambamurthy, 2006). A service-oriented view of information technology (IT) is gradually taking hold in both academia and industry. This is concomitant with the growth of service-related phenomena and concepts (Lusch and Vargo, 2006), stimulating a global discourse about 'service science' as a new, cross-disciplinary field of research (Chesbrough and Spohrer, 2006).

Interoperability for eLearning Service Management and Provision

Learning Objects offer flexibility and adaptability for users to request personalised information for learning. There are standards to guide the development of learning objects. However, individual developers may customise these standards for serving different purposes when defining, describing, managing and providing learning objects, which are normally stored in heterogeneous repositories. Barriers to interoperability hinder sharing of learning services and subsequently affect quality of instructional design as learners expect to be able to receive their personalised learning content. All these impose difficulties to the users in getting the right information from the right sources. This paper investigates the interoperability issues in eLearning services management and provision and presents an approach to resolve interoperability at three levels.

A telecom analytics framework for dynamic quality of service management

Since the beginning of Internet, Internet Service Providers (ISP) have seen the need of giving to users? traffic different treatments defined by agree- ments between ISP and customers. This procedure, known as Quality of Service Management, has not much changed in the last years (DiffServ and Deep Pack-et Inspection have been the most chosen mechanisms). However, the incremen-tal growth of Internet users and services jointly with the application of recent Ma- chine Learning techniques, open up the possibility of going one step for-ward in the smart management of network traffic. In this paper, we first make a survey of current tools and techniques for QoS Management. Then we intro-duce clustering and classifying Machine Learning techniques for traffic charac-terization and the concept of Quality of Experience. Finally, with all these com-ponents, we present a brand new framework that will manage in a smart way Quality of Service in a telecom Big Data based scenario, both for mobile and fixed communications.

Contribution towards intelligent service management in wearable and ubiquitous devices

Hoy en día asistimos a un creciente interés por parte de la sociedad hacia el cuidado de la salud. Esta afirmación viene apoyada por dos realidades. Por una parte, el aumento de las prácticas saludables (actividad deportiva, cuidado de la alimentación, etc.). De igual manera, el auge de los dispositivos inteligentes (relojes, móviles o pulseras) capaces de medir distintos parámetros físicos como el pulso cardíaco, el ritmo respiratorio, la distancia recorrida, las calorías consumidas, etc. Combinando ambos factores (interés por el estado de salud y disponibilidad comercial de dispositivos inteligentes) están surgiendo multitud de aplicaciones capaces no solo de controlar el estado actual de salud, también de recomendar al usuario cambios de hábitos que lleven hacia una mejora en su condición física. En este contexto, los llamados dispositivos llevables (weareables) unidos al paradigma de Internet de las cosas (IoT, del inglés Internet of Things) permiten la aparición de nuevos nichos de mercado para aplicaciones que no solo se centran en la mejora de la condición física, ya que van más allá proponiendo soluciones para el cuidado de pacientes enfermos, la vigilancia de niños o ancianos, la defensa y la seguridad, la monitorización de agentes de riesgo (como bomberos o policías) y un largo etcétera de aplicaciones por llegar. El paradigma de IoT se puede desarrollar basándose en las existentes redes de sensores inalámbricos (WSN, del inglés Wireless Sensor Network). La conexión de los ya mencionados dispositivos llevables a estas redes puede facilitar la transición de nuevos usuarios hacia aplicaciones IoT. Pero uno de los problemas intrínsecos a estas redes es su heterogeneidad. En efecto, existen multitud de sistemas operativos, protocolos de comunicación, plataformas de desarrollo, soluciones propietarias, etc. El principal objetivo de esta tesis es realizar aportaciones significativas para solucionar no solo el problema de la heterogeneidad, sino también de dotar de mecanismos de seguridad suficientes para salvaguardad la integridad de los datos intercambiados en este tipo de aplicaciones. Algo de suma importancia ya que los datos médicos y biométricos de los usuarios están protegidos por leyes nacionales y comunitarias. Para lograr dichos objetivos, se comenzó con la realización de un completo estudio del estado del arte en tecnologías relacionadas con el marco de investigación (plataformas y estándares para WSNs e IoT, plataformas de implementación distribuidas, dispositivos llevables y sistemas operativos y lenguajes de programación). Este estudio sirvió para tomar decisiones de diseño fundamentadas en las tres contribuciones principales de esta tesis: un bus de servicios para dispositivos llevables (WDSB, Wearable Device Service Bus) basado en tecnologías ya existentes tales como ESB, WWBAN, WSN e IoT); un protocolo de comunicaciones inter-dominio para dispositivos llevables (WIDP, Wearable Inter-Domain communication Protocol) que integra en una misma solución protocolos capaces de ser implementados en dispositivos de bajas capacidades (como lo son los dispositivos llevables y los que forman parte de WSNs); y finalmente, la tercera contribución relevante es una propuesta de seguridad para WSN basada en la aplicación de dominios de confianza. Aunque las contribuciones aquí recogidas son de aplicación genérica, para su validación se utilizó un escenario concreto de aplicación: una solución para control de parámetros físicos en entornos deportivos, desarrollada dentro del proyecto europeo de investigación “LifeWear”. En este escenario se desplegaron todos los elementos necesarios para validar las contribuciones principales de esta tesis y, además, se realizó una aplicación para dispositivos móviles por parte de uno de los socios del proyecto (lo que contribuyó con una validación externa de la solución). En este escenario se usaron dispositivos llevables tales como un reloj inteligente, un teléfono móvil con sistema operativo Android y un medidor del ritmo cardíaco inalámbrico capaz de obtener distintos parámetros fisiológicos del deportista. Sobre este escenario se realizaron diversas pruebas de validación mediante las cuales se obtuvieron resultados satisfactorios. ABSTRACT Nowadays, society is shifting towards a growing interest and concern on health care. This phenomenon can be acknowledged by two facts: first, the increasing number of people practising some kind of healthy activity (sports, balanced diet, etc.). Secondly, the growing number of commercial wearable smart devices (smartwatches or bands) able to measure physiological parameters such as heart rate, breathing rate, distance or consumed calories. A large number of applications combining both facts are appearing. These applications are not only able to monitor the health status of the user, but also to provide recommendations about routines in order to improve the mentioned health status. In this context, wearable devices merged with the Internet of Things (IoT) paradigm enable the proliferation of new market segments for these health wearablebased applications. Furthermore, these applications can provide solutions for the elderly or baby care, in-hospital or in-home patient monitoring, security and defence fields or an unforeseen number of future applications. The introduced IoT paradigm can be developed with the usage of existing Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) by connecting the novel wearable devices to them. In this way, the migration of new users and actors to the IoT environment will be eased. However, a major issue appears in this environment: heterogeneity. In fact, there is a large number of operating systems, hardware platforms, communication and application protocols or programming languages, each of them with unique features. The main objective of this thesis is defining and implementing a solution for the intelligent service management in wearable and ubiquitous devices so as to solve the heterogeneity issues that are presented when dealing with interoperability and interconnectivity of devices and software of different nature. Additionally, a security schema based on trust domains is proposed as a solution to the privacy problems arising when private data (e.g., biomedical parameters or user identification) is broadcasted in a wireless network. The proposal has been made after a comprehensive state-of-the-art analysis, and includes the design of a Wearable Device Service Bus (WDSB) including the technologies collected in the requirement analysis (ESB, WWBAN, WSN and IoT). Applications are able to access the WSN services regardless of the platform and operating system where they are running. Besides, this proposal also includes the design of a Wearable Inter-Domain communication Protocols set (WIDP) which integrates lightweight protocols suitable to be used in low-capacities devices (REST, JSON, AMQP, CoAP, etc...). Furthermore, a security solution for service management based on a trustworthy domains model to deploy security services in WSNs has been designed. Although the proposal is a generic framework for applications based on services provided by wearable devices, an application scenario for testing purposes has been included. In this validation scenario it has been presented an autonomous physical condition performance system, based on a WSN, bringing the possibility to include several elements in an IoT scenario: a smartwatch, a physiological monitoring device and a smartphone. In summary, the general objective of this thesis is solving the heterogeneity and security challenges arising when developing applications for WSNs and wearable devices. As it has been presented in the thesis, the solution proposed has been successfully validated in a real scenario and the obtained results were satisfactory.

Public service management.

Editors: -Oct. 1920, H. J. Gonden.--Nov. 1920-Nov. 1922, A. W. Park.--Dec. 1922-1933, J. B. Wootan.

Postal service management of work-related injuries /

"September 28, 1989."

School food service management manual.

Issued July 1977.

Understanding service experience in non-profit performing arts: Implications for operations and service management

Recent research in the non-profit performing arts has shown that marketing efforts designed to increase revenue from ticket sales are not achieving the results required to sustain the performing arts. This paper applies operations management analytical techniques to the non-profit performing arts to increase understanding of operational issues and inform service management strategy. The paper takes a two-study idiographic approach. Implementing a modified version of service transaction analysis (STA), Study One describes a performing arts service from provider and customer perspectives, identifies service gaps and develops an elaborated service description incorporating both perspectives. In Study Two, building on the elaborated service description and extant research, in-depth interviews are conducted to gather thick descriptions of predictors of satisfaction, value and service quality as they relate to repurchase intention (RI). Technical, functional and critical factors required to improve organizational performance are identified. Implications for operational strategy, service design and service management theory for this context are discussed. (c) 2005 Published by Elsevier B.V.

Szolgáltatásmenedzsment Magyarországon a termelő- és a szolgáltatóvállalatoknál (Service management at the manufacturing and service companies in Hungary)

A szolgáltatási tevékenységek ma már döntő szerepet játszanak a gazdaságok működésében, nemcsak az egyre nagyobb arányt képviselő szolgáltatószektorban, hanem a termelővállalatoknál is. Ez a tanulmány – a szolgáltatásmenedzsment néhány elfogadott tételének felhasználásával – azt vizsgálja, hogy a Budapesti Corvinus Egyetem Versenyképesség Kutató Központja által szervezett versenyképesség-kutatás 3. fordulójának adatai alapján mit tudunk mondani ma Magyarországon a szolgáltatásokról. Fő megállapításai szerint hazánkban a termelővállalatok ma felkészültebbek a szolgáltatások nyújtása terén, mint maguk a szolgáltatók. Erőfeszítéseiket nemcsak a szolgáltatásminőség javítására, hanem a szolgáltatásnyújtási folyamat fejlesztésére is fordítják. A nagyobb erőfeszítés pedig erőteljesebb hatást gyakorol a vállalatok jövedelmezőségére és a vevői érték növekedésére egyaránt. ______ Service activities nowadays play a crucial role in developed economies. This statement is true not only in the ever increasing service sector, but also at manufacturing companies. This study gives a picture about services in the Hungarian economy on the basis of the 3rd round competitiveness survey organized by the Competitiveness Research Centre of Corvinus University of Budapest. Some hypotheses based on classical service management issues are tested. According to the most important conclusions, manufacturing companies in Hungary are more prepared today to provide services than the service sector itself. Manufacturing companies put efforts both into improving service quality and processes. And these efforts appear in increasing profitability and customer value.

3D TerraFly: Quality of service management for online interactive 3D geographic information system

3D geographic information system (GIS) is data and computation intensive in nature. Internet users are usually equipped with low-end personal computers and network connections of limited bandwidth. Data reduction and performance optimization techniques are of critical importance in quality of service (QoS) management for online 3D GIS. In this research, QoS management issues regarding distributed 3D GIS presentation were studied to develop 3D TerraFly, an interactive 3D GIS that supports high quality online terrain visualization and navigation. ^ To tackle the QoS management challenges, multi-resolution rendering model, adaptive level of detail (LOD) control and mesh simplification algorithms were proposed to effectively reduce the terrain model complexity. The rendering model is adaptively decomposed into sub-regions of up-to-three detail levels according to viewing distance and other dynamic quality measurements. The mesh simplification algorithm was designed as a hybrid algorithm that combines edge straightening and quad-tree compression to reduce the mesh complexity by removing geometrically redundant vertices. The main advantage of this mesh simplification algorithm is that grid mesh can be directly processed in parallel without triangulation overhead. Algorithms facilitating remote accessing and distributed processing of volumetric GIS data, such as data replication, directory service, request scheduling, predictive data retrieving and caching were also proposed. ^ A prototype of the proposed 3D TerraFly implemented in this research demonstrates the effectiveness of our proposed QoS management framework in handling interactive online 3D GIS. The system implementation details and future directions of this research are also addressed in this thesis. ^