Catherine Mulligan

Architectural implications of smart city business models: an evolutionary perspective

Smart cities have rapidly become a hot topic within technology communities, and promise both improved delivery of services to end users and reduced environmental impact in an era of unprecedented urbanization. Both large hightech companies and grassroots citizen-led initiatives have begun exploring the potential of these technologies. Significant barriers remain to the successful rollout and deployment of business models outlined for smart city applications and services, however. Most of these barriers pertain to an ongoing battle between two main schools of thought for system architecture, ICT and telecommunications, proposed for data management and service creation. Both of these system architectures represent a certain type of value chain and the legacy perspective of the respective players that wish to enter the smart city arena. Smart cities services, however, utilize components of both the ICT industry and mobile telecommunications industries, and do not benefit from the current binary perspective of system architecture. The business models suggested for the development of smart cities require a longterm strategic view of system architecture evolution. This article discusses the architectural evolution required to ensure that the rollout and deployment of smart city technologies is smooth through acknowledging and integrating the strengths of both the system architectures proposed.

Open API standardization for the NGN platform

Next-generation networks promise to provide a richer set of applications for the end user, creating a network platform that enables the rapid creation of new services. Significant progress has been made in the standardization of NGN architecture and protocols, but little progress has been made on open APIs. This article outlines the importance of open APIs and the current achievements of the standards bodies. It concludes with a brief set of issues that standards bodies must resolve in relation to these APIs.

Advancing value creation and value capture in data-intensive contexts

Realizing the vast potential for value creation that Big Data has to offer to firms and public agencies requires a radical departure from the traditional data warehouse model currently in place in most organizations. Given the inability of current approaches to integrate the four dimensions of volume, variety velocity and veracity into a single and coherent framework, new business models around the Big Data paradigm will likely be developed in a collaborative regime in which technology firms, public entities and end customers will organize around ecosystems, strategic partnerships or private-collective modes of technology development and commercialization.

Research and reality: The evolution of Open Network API standards

This document investigates the evolution of the Open Network Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) from a research and industrial perspective over the last 15 years. It provides insight into the work currently ongoing in the Open Mobile Alliance (OMA) and GSM Association (GSMA) with regards to creating developer friendly APIs and delivering them to the market. Finally, it outlines the current research ongoing within the Open API sphere and provides some recommendations for the standardization forums of the communications industries in order to more fully align with this work.

Data supply chain (DSC): Research synthesis and future directions

In the digital economy, the volume, variety and availability of data produced in myriad forms from a diversity of sources has become an important resource for competitive advantage, innovation opportunity as well as source of new management challenges. Building on the theoretical and empirical foundations of the traditional manufacturing Supply Chain (SC), which describes the flow of physical artefacts as raw materials through to consumption, we propose the Data Supply Chain (DSC) along which data are the primary artefact flowing. The purpose of this paper is to outline the characteristics and bring conceptual distinctiveness to the context around DSC as well as to explore the associated and emergent management challenges and innovation opportunities. To achieve this, we adopt the systematic review methodology drawing on the operations management and supply chain literature and, in particular, taking a framework synthetic approach which allows us to build the DSC concept from the pre-existing SC template. We conclude the paper by developing a set of propositions and outlining an agenda for future research that the DSC concept implies.

Swimming with Fishes and Sharks: Beneath the Surface of Queue-Based Ethereum Mining Pools

Cryptocurrency mining can be said to be the modern alchemy, involving as it does the transmutation of electricity into digital gold. The goal of mining is to guess the solution to a cryptographic puzzle, the difficulty of which is determined by the network, and thence to win the block reward and transaction fees. Because the return on solo mining has a very high variance, miners band together to create so-called mining pools. These aggregate the power of several individual miners, and, by distributing the accumulated rewards according to some scheme, ensure a more predictable return for participants.In this paper we formulate a model of the dynamics of a queue-based reward distribution scheme in a popular Ethereum mining pool and develop a corresponding simulation. We show that the underlying mechanism disadvantages miners with above-average hash rates. We then consider two-miner scenarios and show how large miners may perform attacks to increase their profits at the expense of other participants of the mining pool. The outcomes of our analysis show the queue-based reward scheme is vulnerable to manipulation in its current implementation.

Digital Food Hubs as Disruptive Business Models Based on Coopetition and “Shared Value” for Sustainability in the Agri-food Sector

Abstract The chapter introduces digital food hubs as disruptive business models in the agri-food system shifting away from the unsustainable industrialized and conventional food sector and moving toward a re-localized food and farming pattern. They are new digital business models developed to support small and mid-size farms with a value focus, forming new ways to leverage the technology as a facilitator for coopetitive organizational forms. Indeed, they respond to a competitive strategy constituted by a “value strategy” oriented to the production and distribution of “shared value.” Second, they are based on an “organizational strategy” that shifts from individual competition to “coopetition” through the development of local “strategic networks” among small size producers. Central to the development of these business models is the digital disruption that has offered the space for the creation of unconventional exchange and transaction mechanisms distinguishing them from the already existing traditional ways of work. The agri-food markets exhibit structural holes that impede small farms from connecting with local consumers. This is due to a lack of material infrastructures and organizational forms on behalf of small farms that cannot reach the consumers, as well as the concentration of power in the hands of a restricted numbers of distributors, which causes the unequal redistribution of the economic value and impedes small farms accessing the food market. The advent of the digital technology is reshaping the market relationship by allowing out centralized intermediaries and creating new bridges between producers and consumers.

Voice and Emergency Services

This chapter provides an in-depth view of voice services in EPS, including a description of emergency and priority services. In addition, it covers VoLTE, SRVCC and CSFB.

Subscriber Data Management

This chapter provides an in-depth view of subscriber data management functionality in EPS, including a description of the EPS entities handling subscriber data.

Voice Services in EPS

This chapter provides a description of the voice services that are provided over an EPC network, aiming to bring the whole EPS and its concepts together, analysing it from several different potential evolution paths and describes voice services delivered using IMS technology, Single-radio voice call continuity (SRVCC), Circuit-Switched fallback (CSFB) and IMS Emergency Calls and Priority Services.