An Exploration of Emerging IOS Infrastructures

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An Exploration of Emerging IOS Infrastructures

• Pat Finnegan
• University College Cork, Ireland
• May 10th 2004

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Background

• Timmers (1999) sees new business models emerging
  from linkages between elements of the value
  chains of different organisations.
• Such business models result in new internal and
  external processes and relationships.
• This will affect both how organisations relate to
  external parties (customers, suppliers, partners,
  competitors, and markets) and how they operate
  internally in managing activities, processes, and
  systems

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Background

• Much of the research on inter-organisational
  systems and business models has concentrated on
  well-established technology that has been
  implemented in simple supply chains (e.g.
  retailer and supplier)
• Emergent technology such as XML presents a
  potential solution to the dynamic communication
  and collaboration needs of more complex business
  webs
• However, the use of XML to support new
  inter-organisational business models has received
  little empirical attention.

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Case Studies

• Digifone
• Identifying the need for a pooled IOS
  infrastructure
• Reuters
• Building the IOS infrastructure (Reciprocal
  inter-dependencies)
• APRA
• Implementing and exploiting the IOS
  Infrastructure (Sequential Inter-dependencies)

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Digifone and the Mobile Telecommunications Sector

• Digifone
• Founded as Esat Digifone in 1997
• Purchased by BT in April 2001
• Now part of O2
• Buying a 3G license
• The Mobile sector
• Increasingly dynamic
• Mounting debts from spectrum auctions
• An increasingly saturated subscriber base
• Commitments to build new network infrastructure
• Volatile technological change

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The Digifone Experience

• The key issues instead relate to
• the strategic repositioning of the organization
  within the telecommunications sector, and
• the development of the IT and systems
  infrastructure to support the resulting new
  business models

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The Digifone Experience

• Digifone wishes to control ownership of 3G
  consumers, rather than be relegated to a
  commodity service as happened with Internet
  Service Providers (ISPs).
• Digifone will have control of customer
  information that will not be available to any
  other single service/content provider e.g. a
  full mobile commerce purchase history, site
  access history, target advertising details,
  roaming history, etc.
• The m-Commerce Revenue Model Crisis
• The intangible value associated with the
  consumption of mobile commerce services.
• The complexity of the value web needed for the
  delivery of mobile commerce services.

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The Digifone Experience

• Digifone must be able to evaluate mobile services
  based on factors other than the volume of data
  downloaded.
• The IOS infrastructure is required to record
  activities by customers and other value chain
  organisations. In particular, the IOS
  infrastructure can help Digifone
• operationalise a rich description of mobile
  data/services,
• accurately measure the value associated with the
  delivery of these data/services, and
• deliver value-added mediation services to market
  participants.
• Value bar-coding?

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Reuters

• Founded in 1851
• Now one of the worlds largest and most
  successful news and financial information
  organisations.
• Over 16,000 employees in 220 cities in 94
  countries
• Services nearly 500,000 professional users in
  52,900 client locations
• Provides data on more than 960,000 shares, bonds
  etc.
• Read by users of more than 900 web sites
  worldwide, with 50 million online users per
  month.
• Maintains more than 200 million data records.
• Proprietary technology
• Multiple feed multiple boxes architecture
• Rethinking approach from mid-1990s

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Addressing the Needs of a Changing Industry
Dynamic

• Changes within the news media market
• Technological changes in the delivery and
  consumption of digital content, and
• The need to address the enormous logistical
  challenges presented by Reuters media
  operations.

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Supporting Emerging Business Models

• Proliferation of content providers
• Multi-point positioning in the value chain
• Community-driven value

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Supporting Inter-Organisational Business Processes

• Each day,
• Reuters manages around 2500 editorial staff based
  in 190 locations in over 100 countries.
• Reuters produce and distribute about 14,000
  headlines in 26 languages, over 1,000 pictures,
  and 23 hours of broadcast quality video.
• Follow the sun approach
• Reuters bureaus in various locations around the
  world collaborate over time to follow the
  unfolding of related news stories
• Internal peer-review

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Supporting Inter-Organisational Business Processes

• content management is not only an issue in
  the packaging stage where you are combining
  content, but also at the content creation stage
  when you want to know who is doing what and when,
  and what has previously been done on the subject

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Supporting Inter-Organisational Business
Processes
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From an Internal Solution to an Open Industry
Standard

• The challenges with news content management were
• strategic and operational, as well as
  technological
• not unique to Reuters, or to the internal
  processes of any one organisation, but were
  industry-wide
• one of the reasons Reuters chose the IPTC as a
  consortium is that is where our peers
  represented.

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NewsML

• Reuters invented ReutersNewsML in 1998.
• Reuters submitted it to the International Press
  Telecommunications Council (IPTC), which
  coordinated the development of NewsML.
• NewsML has become the standard data format for
  multimedia content in Reuters Internet Delivery
  System (IDS)
• NewsML was ratified as an IPTC standard for the
  entire global news media industry in 2000

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NewsML

• Multi-media news wrapper
• Facilitates exchange of news items
• Addresses needs of heterogeneous client
  environments (mobile phones, desktop computers,
  interactive television, handheld computers or
  other devices).
• Provides a common structure that enables news
  providers like Reuters to flexibly combine and
  recombine content items as they wish.
• Helps publishers to create packages of
  personalised information targeted at specific
  audiences/users.

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APRA

• Australian Prudential Regulator
• Established in July 1998
• Co-operative venture with ABS and RBA (Central
  bank)
• XBRL-enabled IOS linking financial institutions
  with APRA, ABS RBA.
• Re-engineering the regulation process

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Complexity of data consumption

• Ubiquitous data consumption
• Heterogeneous nature of data consumption
• Need to aggregate disparate data
• Adaptable data consumption
• Adaptive to users behaviour and environment
• Proliferation of data consumers

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Complexity of Value Webs

• Constant change
• Re-positioning of existing players
• Inter-dependence between participants
• Multiple roles in the value web
• Proliferation of players

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Context-driven data exchanges

• Real-time transparent exchanges
• Need to manage exchanges
• Need to measure value
• Metadata as value driver
• Data as a commodity

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Commoditisation of IT

• Pushed by legacy systems / integration
• Inter-industry standard (XML)
• Intra-industry platforms (Vocabs)
• Open tools
• Intangibles-based competition

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Cooperation among value-web participants

• Community of peers
• Knowledge sharing
• Trust
• Collaboration
• Shared cost
• Shared risk

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Summary
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Conclusions