Application Management

As ‘informatization’ has increasingly spread to encompass more and more of our everyday business activities, the role of the Chief Information Officer (CIO) has also undergone radical changes. Whereas in the past the ‘Head of IT’ was often regarded by their colleagues and superiors as barely more than a strange technology geek, in recent years the CIO has become a key figure in many organizations. This change is reflected in more than simply the new title following the Anglo-American CxO convention.

The term cloud computing is sometimes used to refer to a new paradigm – some authors even speak of a new technology – that flexibly offers IT resources and services over the Internet. Gartner market research sees cloud computing as a so-called “emerging technology” on its way to the hype. When looking at the number of searches for the word pair “cloud computing” undertaken with the Google search engine one can get an imagination of the high interest on the topic. Even terms like “outsourcing”, “Software-as-a-Service (SaaS)” or “grid computing” have already been overtaken.

This article on quality management has been possible by putting together my experiences around the subject while being a practitioner myself.

The Information Technology (IT) market has been developing rapidly since its emergence. Hardware and software, network and storage media, programming languages and new data warehouse concepts demonstrate an evolution that was not considered possible a few years ago. With these developments the standards towards IT service provider are increasing and changing. Traditionally, keywords like ‚Business Process Outsourcing (BPO)’ or ‘On-site, offshore delivery’ were formative for this business. Nowadays, a companies’ strategy needs to incorporate trends such as ‘Green IT’ or ‘Cloud computing’. The latter being known as singular IT services which are flexibly retrievable and scalable, e. g.‚ Software as a Service (SaaS)’ or‚ Platform as a Service (PaaS)’.

This article describes aspects of knowledge management and its significance for application management. It presents instruments and methods for knowledge transfer on the basis of fundamental knowledge management approaches and theories. In application management, knowledge is transferred when responsibility passes to another party, especially when an implementation project is completed or when the operation of applications is outsourced or outtasked.

Industry analysts have made several enthusiastic projections on how cloud computing will transform the entire computing industry. According to recent research studies it is on the verge of becoming an extremely lucrative business: the financial profit to be drawn from business and productivity applications as well as related online advertising is expected to amount to billions of Dollars. However, the question arises whether there are any obstacles on the way to mature cloud computing environments. If one looks at IT outsourcing and the emerging field of cloud computing from an economic perspective, some obvious similarities between the two concepts strike the eye. In other words, already existing knowledge about the outsourcing of IT Services should be aligned with new arising obstacles and challenges created by the cloud. The objective of our paper is to support the improvement of decisionmaking processes by contributing to a better understanding of risk and compliance issues in the field of cloud computing and of their likely impacts. This can only be achieved by identifying the main risks and the necessary safeguards required. The reference model presented in this article could help to accomplish this goal.

In this chapter we draw parallels between IT application development and management and the construction industry and internationalizing firms therein: while the construction lifecycle with its phases design, build, operate resembles that of IT, the internationalization of firms with a physical product – buildings – can be related to the virtualization of a digital industry – the recent trend to cloud computing. We are interested in different forms of learning between stages of multi-stage projects. In particular, we try to understand how to conceptually distinguish learning from mere trouble shooting. We build on research in the construction industry and lessons from a case study with a firm that integrates design, build and operation phase and internationalizes its operation through offshoring part of its value chain.

The leading drivers of strategic chance in our current environment are globalization and technological innovation. According to B radley, H ausman and N olan, leading change in technology will be a fusion of information technologies and telecommunications, resulting in creating new industries, restructuring existing ones and changing the way companies compete.

In the following article theories and findings of recent research have been drawn upon to analyze the problems with respect to Usage Barriers which arise during handling Web Applications and the possible consequences. From this we can deduce which influencing factors with possibly high potential for explanation have been neglected till date during the research of the design of Web Applications. The aim of this article is therefore to highlight the potential of morphological psychology for deriving requirements for design recommendations of Web Applications using examples of Customer Self Service Applications.

Application management support (AMS) is becoming a key strategic element for success of major businesses across the world. This initiative allows businesses to focus and concentrate solely on their core business strategies. In an ever changing competitive and technological world, AMS and outsourcing to trusted partners ensures that a business maintains pace.

A never-ending problem in the software industry is to keep up an efficient path in term of products releases. There are many reasons for this: manage the customer's expectations, show a competitive spirit as well as a good reactivity, develop an aggressive marketing campaign and as an end result occupy the market. As one of the best examples, Apple releases over an approximately two years cycle a massive amount of software and hardware products: complete renewal of their hardware offerings, releasing of a major Operating System version for both desktop computer and mobile device product line, releasing of at least one new version of their consumer application software suite, as well as of their office application suite, shipping of their professional application software, security updates and many various updates in different areas.

Latin America has been emerging as a strong IT services market. This achievement has been of course very important for local and global service providers and also for several companies in the region; but specially for Latin American governments who are able to accelerate their economies with IT services as a very important pillar.