@phdthesis{Jankowska2007, author = {Jankowska, Bozena}, title = {Architectural Frameworks for Automated Content Adaptation to Mobile Devices Based on Open-Source Technologies}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:kobv:521-opus-234}, school = {Europa-Universit{\"a}t Viadrina Frankfurt}, year = {2007}, abstract = {The Web and enterprise information systems are gradually increasing their reach to a wide range of mobile devices. Although analysts hope for a breakthrough in the popularity of mobile solutions, field studies show that, except for Japan and South Korea, there is still a large gap between the technical capabilities of wireless devices/networks and the adoption of mobile services for business and private use. This paradox can be attributed to a high extent to low quality of existing mobile solutions and to their insufficient usability, represented particularly by two attributes: simplicity of use and content relevance. Additionally, network providers are afraid that mobile Internet could cannibalize their revenues from SMS and entertainment services and do not want to cooperate with service providers to improve the quality of services offered. Wireless applications depend on device-specific features such as input/output mechanisms, screen sizes, computing resources, and support for various multimedia formats and languages. This leads to the need for multi-source authoring - the creation of separate presentations for each device type or, at least, for each class of devices. Multi-source authoring is not a cost-efficient and feasible solution, especially for mobile services consisting of numerous pages. Therefore, various single-source or device-independent techniques that try to tackle the dream of software developers for automatic content generation emerged. These techniques perform the adaptation to the characteristics of mobile devices on the client- or server-side or with the help of some intermediary, the so-called proxy. The high complexity of most adaptation frameworks, missing support for the design and development of mobile content, or the lack of non-proprietary solutions often lead to the rejection of offered adaptation methods. This thesis describes the current state of the art in the area of adaptation techniques and proposes two new approaches for device-independent content delivery that are based on open-source technologies: the Mobile Interfaces Tag Library (MITL) framework and the Mobile Web Services Adaptation (MoWeSA) framework. The first framework is based on Mobile Interfaces Tag Library (MITL), in the second one Web Services Tag Library (WSTL) was introduced. MITL enables dynamic generation of content from existing Web pages, databases, or any other information sources. WSTL aims at the communication with Web Services. In both frameworks the development process is supported by an advanced Integrated Development Environment. Mobile services can be accessed from PCs, mobile phones or PDAs, and can be developed as browser-based or stand-alone applications. The MITL and MoWeSA frameworks currently support content delivery in the most popular formats (HTML, XHTML, WML, and Java ME) but are easily extensible to additional markup languages or standards. Tests conducted among end-user programmers confirmed that the proposed solutions are easy to learn and apply. The frameworks support the separation of tasks between page designers responsible for content presentation and programmers who modify business logic encapsulated in reusable components.}, subject = {Mobile Computing}, language = {en} } @phdthesis{Datsenka2013, author = {Datsenka, Rastsislau}, title = {Client's Readiness for IT Offshoring in Germany: A Model of Maturity, Capability and Business-IT Alignment}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:kobv:521-opus-907}, school = {Europa-Universit{\"a}t Viadrina Frankfurt}, year = {2013}, abstract = {The market for information technology (IT) offshoring is growing globally at a tremendously high rate. Companies all over the world are showing significant interest in subcontracting their IT services to low-cost offshore destinations in Eastern Europe and Asia. However, in Germany despite several decades of experiments with IT offshoring, many decision makers are still not fully aware of this practice, or, because of numerous technical and economic reasons, are cautious about adopting it. Researchers have shown that the motivation for German companies to move part or all of their IT services offshore is still significantly lower than that in the U.S. or Great Britain. The major goal of this research is to measure the readiness of German companies to adopt ITO, and to develop a model describing which factors determine a client's readiness to implement this business model and what impact these factors have on the success of offshore projects.}, subject = {Outsourcing}, language = {en} }