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The World Wide Web (WWW) has become a very important communication channel. Its usage has steadily grown within the past. Interest by website owners in identifying user behaviour has been around since Tim Berners-Lee developed the first web browser in 1990. But as the influence of the online channel today eclipses all other media the interest in monitoring website usage and user activities has intensified as well. Gathering and analysing data about the usage of websites can help to understand customer behaviour, improve services and potentially increase profit.
It is further essential for ensuring effective website design and management, efficient mass customization and effective marketing. Web Analytics (WA) is the area addressing these considerations. However, changing technologies and evolving Web Analytic methods and processes present a challenge to organisations starting with Web Analytic programmes. Because of lacking resources in different areas and other types of websites especially small and medium-sized enterprises (SME) as well as non-profit organisations struggle to operate WA in an effective manner.
This research project aims to identify the existing gap between theory, tool possibilities and business needs for undertaking Web Analytic programmes. Therefore the topic was looked at from three different ways: the academic literature, Web Analytic tools and an interpretative case study. The researcher utilized an action research approach to investigate Web Analytics presenting an holistic overview and to identify the gaps that exists. The outcome of this research project is an overall framework, which provides guidance for SMEs who operate information websites on how to proceed in a Web Analytic programme.
The Internet of Things (IoT) is a network of addressable, physical objects that contain embedded sensing, communication and actuating technologies to sense and interact with their environment (Geschickter 2015). Like every novel paradigm, the IoT sparks interest throughout all domains both in theory and practice, resulting in the development of systems pushing technology to its limits. These limits become apparent when having to manage an increasing number of Things across various contexts. A plethora of IoT architecture proposals have been developed and prototype products, such as IoT platforms, been introduced. However, each of these architectures and products apply their very own interpretations of an IoT architecture and its individual components so that IoT is currently more an Intranet of Things than an Internet of Things (Zorzi et al. 2010). Thus, this thesis aims to develop a common understanding of the elements forming an IoT architecture and provide high-level specifications in the form of a Holistic IoT Architecture Framework.
Design Science Research (DSR) is used in this thesis to develop the architecture framework based on the pertinent literature. The development of the Holistic IoT Architecture Framework includes the identification of two new IoT Architecture Perspectives that became apparent during the analysis of the IoT architecture proposals identified in the extant literature. While applying these novel perspectives, the need for a new component for the architecture framework, which was merely implicitly mentioned in the literature, became obvious as well. The components of various IoT architecture proposals as well as the novel component, the Thing Management System, were combined, consolidated and related to each other to develop the Holistic IoT Architecture Framework. Subsequently, it was shown that the specifications of the architecture framework are suitable to guide the implementation of a prototype.
This contribution provides a common understanding of the basic building blocks, actors and relations of an IoT architecture.
With global and distributed project teams being increasingly common Collaborative Project Management is becoming the prevalent paradigm for the work in most organisations. Software has for many years been one of the most used tools for supporting Project Management and with the focus on Collaborative Project Management and accompanied by the emergence of Enterprise Collaboration Systems (ECS), Collaborative Project Management Software (CPMS) is gaining increased attention. This thesis examines the capabilities of CPMS for the long-term management of information which not only includes the management of files within these systems, but the management of all types of digital business documents, particularly social business documents. Previous research shows that social content in collaboration software is often poorly managed which poses challenges to meeting performance and conformance objectives in a business. Based on literature research, requirements for the long-term management of information in CPMS are defined and 7 CPMS tools are analysed regarding the content they contain and the functionalities for the long-term management of this content they offer. The study shows that CPMS by and large are not able to meet the long-term information management needs of an organisation on their own and that only the tools geared towards enterprise customers have sufficient capabilities to support the implementation of an Enterprise Information Management strategy.
Coordination and awareness mechanisms are important in systems for Computer-Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW) and traditional groupware systems. It has been a key focus of research into collaborative groupware and its capability to enable people to efficiently collaborate and coordinate work. Until now, no classification of the mechanisms has been undertaken to identify commonalities and differences in coordination and awareness mechanisms and to show their significance in collaborative environments. In addition, there is a little investigation of coordination and awareness mechanisms in new forms of groupware such as socially enabled Enterprise Collaboration Systems (ECS). Indeed, both in science and in practices, ECS incorporating social software have become increasingly important. Based on the combination of traditional groupware and social software, ECS also include coordination and awareness mechanisms that may simplify collaboration, but these have not yet been investigated.
Therefore, the aim of this thesis is to identify coordination and awareness mechanisms in the academic literature to provide a general overview of those mechanisms examples. Additionally, this thesis aims to classify the mechanism examples. Based on a deep literature analysis, concepts described in literature are chosen and applied with the intension to analyse the mechanisms and to reach a classification. Based on the classification of the identified mechanisms their commonalities and differences are examined and described to gain a better understanding of them. For illustration purpose, examples of coordination and awareness mechanisms and their application are portrayed. The mechanisms examples refer to the classification groups derived. The selection of the mechanisms for the visualization is based on significant differences in their functionality. Subsequently, the selected mechanisms, more based on traditional groupware, are checked to a limited extend whether they can be found in socially enabled ECS. The collaborative platform of IBM Connections serves as a practical example of ECS incorporating social software. IBM Connections is used at the University of Koblenz to run the platform "UniConnect". On the platform it is investigated which of the identified mechanisms examples of the literature are applied in IBM Connections and which additional mechanisms are created by users. This work is the first step in the study of coordination and awareness mechanisms in socially-enabled ECS. In addition, it is expected to detect new mechanisms which are used while the social factor to collaborative work is new.
The purpose of this thesis is to examine and collect coordination and awareness mechanisms examples in literature to analyse them. Additionally, the purpose is to provide a first overview of mechanisms and to classify them by investigating their commonalities. Beside this thesis should give incentive for further investigations to investigate coordination and awareness mechanisms in socially integrated ECS.
This thesis is providing an overview over the current topics and influences of mobile components on Enterprise Content Management (ECM). With a literature review the core topics of enterprise mobility and ECM have been identified and projected on the context of using mobile Apps within the environment of ECM. An analysis of three ECM systems and their mobile software lead to an understanding of the functionalities and capabilities mobile systems are providing in the ECM environment. These findings lead to a better un- derstanding for the usage of mobile Enterprise Content Management and is preparation. The thesis focuses the most important topics, which need to be considered for the usage and adoption of mobile Apps in ECM.
We are entering the 26th year from the time the World Wide Web (WWW) became reality. Since the birth of the WWW in 1990, the Internet and therewith websites have changed the way businesses compete, shifting products, services and even entire markets.
Therewith, gathering and analysing visitor traffic on websites can provide crucial information to un- derstand customer behavior and numerous other aspects.
Web Analytics (WA) tools offer a quantity of diverse functionality, which calls for complex decision- making in information management. Website operators implement Web Analytic tools such as Google Analytics to analyse their website for the purpose of identifying web usage to optimise website design and management. The gathered data leads to emergent knowledge, which provides new marketing opportunities and can be used to improve business processes and understand customer behavior to increase profit. Moreover, Web Analytics plays a significant role to measure performance and has therefore become an important component in web-based environments to make business decisions.
However, many small and medium –sized enterprises try to keep up with the web business competi- tion, but do not have the equivalent resources in manpower and knowledge to stand the pace, there- fore some even resign entirely on Web Analytics.
This research project aims to develop a Web Analytics framework to assist small and medium-sized enterprises in making better use of Web Analytics. By identifying business requirements of SMEs and connecting them to the functionality of Google Analytics, a Web Analytics framework with attending guidelines is developed, which guides SMEs on how to proceed in using Google Analytics to achieve actionable outcomes.
The purpose of this research is to examine various existing cloud-based Internet of Things (IoT) development platforms and evaluate one platform (IBM Watson IoT) in detail using a use case scenario. Internet of Things IoT is an emerging technology that has a vision of interconnecting the virtual world (e.g. clouds, social networks) and the physical world (e.g. device, cars, fridge, people, animals) through the Internet technology. For example, the IoT concept of smart cities which has the objectives to improve the efficiency and development of business, social and cultural services in the city, can be achieved by using sensors, actuators, clouds and mobile devices (IEEE, 2015). A sensor (e.g. temperature sensor) in the building (global world) can send the real-time data to the IoT cloud platform (virtual world), where it can be monitored, stored, analysed, or used to trigger some action (e.g. turn on the cooling system in the building if temperature exceeds a threshold limit). Although, the IoT creates vast opportunities in different areas (e.g. transportation, healthcare, manufacturing industry), it also brings challenges such as standardisation, interoperability, scalability, security and privacy. In this research report, IoT concepts and related key issues are discussed.
The focus of this research is to compare various cloud-based IoT platforms in order to understand the business and technical features they offer. The cloud-based IoT platforms from IBM, Google, Microsoft, PTC and Amazon have been studied.
To design the research, the Design Science Research (DSR) methodology has been followed, and to model the real-time IoT system the IOT-A modelling approach has been used.
The comparison of different cloud based IoT development platforms shows that all of the studied platforms provide basic IoT functionalities such as connecting the IoT devices to the cloud based IoT platform, collecting data from the IoT devices, data storage and data analytics. However, the IBM’s IoT platform appears to have an edge over the other platforms studied in this research because of the integrated run-time environment which also makes it more developer friendly. Therefore, IBM Watson IoT for Bluemix is selected for further examination of its capabilities. The IBM Watson IoT for Bluemix offerings include analytics, risk management, connect and information management. A use case was implemented to assess the capabilities that IBM Watson IoT platform offers. The digital artifacts (i.e. applications) are produced to evaluate the IBM’s IoT solution. The results show that IBM offers a very scalable, developer and deployment friendly IoT platform. Its cognitive, contextual and predictive analytics provide a promising functionality that can be used to gain insights from the IoT data transmitted by the sensors and other IoT devices.
The principles of project management are due to the influences of economic conditions and technological development in transition [Wills 1998 & Jonsson et al. 2001]. The increasing in-ternationalization, shortened time to market, changing labor costs and the increasing involve-ment of professionals distributed geographical locations are drivers of the transformations of the project landscape [Evaristo/van Fenema 1999]. Resulting from this, the use of collabora-tive technologies is a crucial factor for the success of a project. [Romano et al. 2002]. Previous research on the use of collaborative technologies for project management purposes focuses especially the development of model-like, universal system architectures to identify the requirements for a specially designed collaborative project management system. This thesis investigates the challenges and benefits that arise when an organisation imple-ments business software for the purpose of collaborative project management.
In the last few years the Internet of things has gained increased attention from authors as well as companies due to its innovation potential. The rising interest in the Internet of Things has also affected the logistics, which currently suffers from the effects of the globalization and the ever-increasing competitive pressure. Thus, there are efforts to discover how the logistics can profit from the use of IoT concepts, ideas and technologies to help it overcome its challenges. This research study focuses on the identification of these efforts and the corresponding research for logistics processes. For that purpose the researcher explored current literature referring to this topic. The final outcome of this paper is a structured overview of the identified IoT use-cases, their corresponding technologies and devices and finally their affected stakeholders. Whether the expectations regarding the IoT implementation in logistics processes are met, how companies can profit from these use-cases and which problems potentially arise by using IoT devices and technologies in logistics are answered at the end of this paper.
The Internet of Things (IoT) is a fast-growing, technological concept, which aims to integrate various physical and virtual objects into a global network to enable interaction and communication between those objects (Atzori, Iera and Morabito, 2010). The application possibilities are manifold and may transform society and economy similarly to the usage of the internet (Chase, 2013). Furthermore, the Internet of Things occupies a central role for the realisation of visionary future concepts, for example, Smart City or Smart Healthcare. In addition, the utilisation of this technology promises opportunities for the enhancement of various sustainability aspects, and thus for the transformation to a smarter, more efficient and more conscious dealing with natural resources (Maksimovic, 2017). The action principle of sustainability increasingly gains attention in the societal and academical discourse. This is reasoned by the partly harmful consumption and production patterns of the last century (Mcwilliams et al., 2016). Relating to sustainability, the advancing application of IoT technology also poses risks. Following the precautionary principle, these risks should be considered early (Harremoës et al., 2001). Risks of IoT for sustainability include the massive amounts of energy and raw materials which are required for the manufacturing and operation of IoT objects and furthermore, the disposal of those objects (Birkel et al., 2019). The exact relations in the context of IoT and sustainability are insufficiently explored to this point and do not constitute a central element within the discussion of this technology (Behrendt, 2019). Therefore, this thesis aims to develop a comprehensive overview of the relations between IoT and sustainability.
To achieve this aim, this thesis utilises the methodology of Grounded Theory in combination with a comprehensive literature review. The analysed literature primarily consists of research contributions in the field of Information Technology (IT). Based on this literature, aspects, solution approaches, effects and challenges in the context of IoT and sustainability were elaborated. The analysis revealed two central perspectives in this context. IoT for Sustainability (IoT4Sus) describes the utilisation and usage of IoT-generated information to enhance sustainability aspects. In contrast, Sustainability for IoT (Sus4IoT) fo-cuses on sustainability aspects of the applied technology and highlights methods to reduce negative impacts, which are associated with the manufacturing and operation of IoT. Elaborated aspects and relations were illustrated in the comprehensive CCIS Framework. This framework represents a tool for the capturing of relevant aspects and relations in this context and thus supports the awareness of the link between IoT and sustainability. Furthermore, the framework suggests an action principle to optimise the performance of IoT systems regarding sustainability.
The central contribution of this thesis is represented by the providence of the CCIS Framework and the contained information regarding the aspects and relations of IoT and sustainability.
