Information and Communication Management

Completed Projects

In this area you will find the completed projects of the Chair of ICM within the research topics cloud computing, green IT and sustainable information management, IT service management, management in the field of computer games and telecommunications management.

Cloud Computing

Cloud Extender

Projekttitel: Cloud Extender - Cloud Business Model Generation

Partner:

  1. StoneOne AG
  2. TUB Institut für Telekommunikationssysteme, Fachgebiet für Komplexe und Verteilte IT-Systeme (CIT)


Laufzeit: 15 Monate
Beginn: 2011

Kurzbeschreibung:
Ziel des Projektes ist die Lösung der wesentlichen Aufgabenstellung, eine generische Komponenten-basierte Applikationsinfrastruktur in einer Cloud-Umgebung bedarfsorientiert zu expandieren und zu reduzieren. Die zentrale Idee liegt in der automatisierten Nutzung modernster Cloud-Technologie für nahezu beliebige Web-Anwendungen. Auf Basis einer Enterprise-Bus-Architektur und dazu passenden Komponenten können flexible Software-Systeme entworfen werden, die in diversen Systemumgebungen (lokal, in der Cloud, Hybrid) lauffähig sind und je nach aktueller Last dynamisch Ressourcen einsetzen bzw. beziehen.

Aufgabengebiete des IKM-Lehrstuhls u.a.:

  • Stand der Forschung, aktuelle Trends und Entwicklungen im Themenfeld des Cloud Computing.
  • Wirtschaftlichkeitsbetrachtung, Erarbeitung von Business Cases, Untersuchung finanzieller und nichtfinanzieller betriebswirtschaftlicher Auswirkungen.
  • Unterstützung bei der Marktrecherche und Evaluierung von bekannten Cloud Anbietern und technischen Anforderungen; Einbringen einer externen Perspektive bei konzeptionellen Entwicklungen und Umsetzung von Geschäftsmodellen; Geschäftsprozessmodellierung und -analyse.

TRESOR

Project title:TRusted Ecosystem for Standardized and Open cloud-based Resources
Acronym: TRESOR



Partner:

  1. medisite Systemhaus GmbH,
  2. T-Systems International GmbH,
  3. Deutsches Herzzentrum Berlin,
  4. Paulinenhaus Krankenanstalt e.V.,
  5. UBIRY GmbH
  6. TUB SNET
     


Duration: 36 months
Start: 2011

Description:

The TRESOR project aims to build a cloud ecosystem, which is being implemented as an example for the application area of ​​patient care in the healthcare sector. Components of the ecosystem are a new, open PaaS platform and a cloud broker. The former is based on established standards for application services with USDL and OSGi and thus enables interoperability between different providers of this platform during cloud migration in order to avoid lock-in effects.

In addition, the reuse and orchestration of various services is supported, which leads to a reduction in costs and faster implementation of new services. In the emerging marketplace of cloud resources, the cloud broker assumes the role of a trustworthy mediator who mediates, bundles and makes these resources accessible, taking company guidelines, legal regulations and security technologies into account. Furthermore, the broker integrates new concepts for the geographical limitation of the use of cloud services and associated data.

Trusted Capital Cloud

Project title:Trusted Capital Cloud
Acronym: TCC

Partner:

  1. StoneOne AG,
  2. Fraunhofer FOKUS,
  3. TU Berlin, Fachbiet IKM.
     


Duration: 24 months
Start: December 2012

Description:

As part of the TCC project, an internet platform is being created that contains a marketplace of trustworthy and proven cloud services with a special focus on the Berlin-Brandenburg region. This marketplace will bundle typical fee-based offers in the areas of Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), Platform as a Service (PaaS) and Software as a Service (SaaS) and provide them in a well-structured form on the Internet of Services. In addition to economic parameters, security-relevant and legal aspects are in the foreground, as business-critical data should also be relocated to the cloud, especially in the context of business applications. The “trust” factor in particular should be taken into account through certified quality criteria for the services offered.

Green IT and Sustainable Information Management

Government Green Cloud Laboratory

Project title: Government Green Cloud Laboratory (GGC-Lab)
On behalf of the Bundesministerium für Wirtschaft und Technologie (BMWi)
Funding program IT2Green

Partner:

  1. regio iT aachen GmbH
  2. Dataport (Public corporation)
  3. ekom21 – KGRZ Hessen (Public corporation)
  4. Brandenburg IT service provider (ZIT-BB, State Office of the State of Brandenburg)
  5. StoneOne AG
  6. TU Berlin (Chairs of ICM, EnSys, EVUR)


Duration: 36 months
Start: June 2011

Description:
In the GGC-Lab, the possibilities of cloud computing are examined at the laboratory level, paying particular attention to energy efficiency and the reduction of energy costs. Typical application scenarios of state and local administrations are considered. For this purpose, an expandable cloud infrastructure for public administration is being technically implemented and tested for the first time. Four productive data centers will work together across federal states. Due to its high practical relevance, the project can serve as a best practice solution for a variety of application areas. The results from the cloud laboratory should flow into various areas, for example in the

  • Development of a "National Government Cloud",
  • Development of new business models,
  • Increasing the efficiency of web solutions and
  • Integrate administrative IT into energy pools.


Areas of responsibility of the Chair of ICM i.a.:

  • Development of a model for the analysis of cloud computing scenarios
  • Development of a design approach for the conception of cloud-based incentive models
  • Investigation of the framework conditions of the public sector for cloud computing
  • Evaluation of suitable IT specialist applications for cloud computing scenarios

Green IT Cockpit

On behalf of the Bundesministerium für Wirtschaft und Technologie (BMWi)

Project title: "Green IT Cockpit - Organisationsweites, geschäftsprozessorientiertes Management-Cockpit für die Energieeffizienz von IKT"

Project partner:

  • TimeKontor AG
  • Axel Springer AG
  • Umweltbundesamt
  • Technische Universität Berlin, Fachgebiet Energieverfahrenstechnik und Umwandlungstechniken regenerativer Energien (EVUR), Prof. Dr. Berhendt

Duration:

01.04.2011 – 31.03.2014 (36 months)

Description:
The aim of the project is to research and develop an organization-wide, business process-oriented management cockpit for the energy efficiency of ICT (Green IT Cockpit). Based on a system of key performance indicators (KPIs) and a performance measurement system, the basis for operational business intelligence in connection with green IT is laid. The management cockpit to be developed enables organizations to collect information on the energy efficiency of ICT from various systems (data center, network infrastructure and peripherals such as thin clients or desktops, printers, scanners, etc.) in a way that is specific to areas and business processes, and this information is simple, aggregated and easy to interpret Prepare a form for strategic planning and improvement of the ICT-related energy efficiency of the organization. The visualization of this information by the cockpit takes place, for example, in the form of traffic lights, scales or tachometers in order to make improvement and optimization potentials visible in a targeted and direct manner.
In addition to the analysis of relevant key figures, the content and user interface of the cockpit offer the possibility of detailed investigation of cause-effect relationships. To ensure maximum transferability of the results, KPIs and benchmarks on energy efficiency of ICT in process and value chains in large companies, SMEs and administration will be the subject of the investigation.

IT Service Management

Towards real-time IT service management systems: In-situ analysis of events and incidents using SAP HANA

HPI Project of the month
September 2013

Team

Prof. Dr. Rüdiger Zarnekow
Dipl.-Phys. Thorsten Pröhl

Research institution

Technische Universität Berlin
Chair of Information and Communication Management

Project Description

Information technology service management (ITSM) is of increasing importance to IT organizations around the world, while information systems (IS) play a crucial function in private and public sector organizations. ITSM leads to a paradigm shift from a traditional IT organization to a customer-oriented IT service provider. The need to align the IT strategy with the business strategy, increasing the transparency of IT processes and quality while at the same time reducing the cost of IT services are some of the reasons why the information technology infrastructure library (ITIL), as the de-facto standard of IT service management, is introduced.

Key topics of ITIL are event and incident management, which describe how to manage the whole event and incident lifecycle. According to ITIL an event is defined as “a change of state that has significance for the management of an IT service […]”. The term is also used to mean an alert or notification created by any IT service, configuration item or monitoring tool. In addition, IT organizations are dealing with a huge number of incidents in their daily business. ITIL describes incidents as “an unplanned interruption to an IT service or reduction in the quality of an IT service”. Furthermore, major incidents are described as “the highest category of impact. A major incident results in significant disruption to the business.” Thus, the identification and resolution of these major incidents is a matter of special importance.

In the domain of ITSM, there are various fields of application for big data analyses and operation of in-memory technology. Real-time analysis of alerts, events, and incidents leads to proactive actions and processes. Incidents could be predicted, rapidly identified, and resolved in a timely manner. Moreover, serious issues, major incidents, could be recognized among a crowd of “normal” incidents. In order to recognize these kinds of incidents, text analysis techniques and dependency resolution of IT services can be applied. In contrast to the traditional resolution and visualization of configuration items (CIs), now the resolution of service dependencies is possible. The demand for this kind of analyses is increasing due to the complexity of services and data center structures. Cloud services and far-reaching value chains lead up to service dependency analyses. In addition, the ITIL IT security process (“information security management”) is encouraged by user behavior and data analyses. Near-term determination of capacity and availability issues support capacity and availability management. On top of this, in-memory technologies offer new possibilities regarding the observance of service level agreements (SLAs). Usually, SLA reports are generated once a month, now, real-time SLAs are conceivable, whereas predictive SLAs will support service managers as they are able to start corrective actions in a timely manner. Dashboards visualize both kinds of SLAs in an appealing way, therefore service managers don't have to wait for recurring reports.

This research project will focus on a subset of envisaged new ITSM topics. This project investigates the real-time identification possibilities of events and (major) incidents. Therefore, the authors will build up a “live” system based on a big database and develop respectively use pattern matching techniques in order to treat the event and (major) incident issues. Finally, the in-situ monitoring of SLAs will be performed.

The above figure presents a high level view of the underlying architecture. Within the project scope, we implement monitoring nodes based on Nagios or Icinga in order to monitor and control IT resources like databases, web and ftp servers. Furthermore, these nodes observe virtual machine (VM) hosts and single VMs. It is necessary to distinguish between agent-based and agentless monitoring; our nodes support both modes of operation. These monitoring systems collect event and sensor data from different sources in order to transfer these via VPN to our HANA instance, where a continual load into corresponding database tables happens. On the opposite side, a dashboard shows events, created incidents, and compliance of contracted SLAs. This proof of concept has different users, which have different needs for information and therefore various dashboard views.

Towards real-time IT service management systems: Development of a SLA dashboard using SAP HANA

Team

Prof. Dr. Ruediger Zarnekow
Dipl.-Phys. Thorsten Proehl

Research institution

Technische Universität Berlin

Chair of Information and Communication Management

Short Abstract

This research project is a follow-up for the previous one called “Towards real-time IT service management systems: In-situ analysis of events and incidents using SAP HANA”.

Information technology service management (ITSM) is of increasing importance to IT organizations around the world, while information systems (IS) play a crucial function in private and public sector organizations. ITSM leads to a paradigm shift from a traditional IT organization to a customer-oriented IT service provider. The need to align the IT strategy with the business strategy, increasing the transparency of IT processes and quality while at the same time reducing the cost of IT services are some of the reasons why the information technology infrastructure library (ITIL), as the de-facto standard of IT service management, is introduced.

Key topics of ITIL are event and incident management, which describe how to manage the whole event and incident lifecycle. According to ITIL an event is defined as “a change of state that has significance for the management of an IT service […]”. The term is also used to mean an alert or notification created by any IT service, configuration item or monitoring tool. In addition, IT organizations are dealing with a huge number of incidents in their daily business. ITIL describes incidents as “an unplanned interruption to an IT service or reduction in the quality of an IT service”. Furthermore, major incidents are described as “the highest category of impact. A major incident results in significant disruption to the business.” Thus, the identification and resolution of these major incidents is a matter of special importance.

Information about resolution time of incidents, number of incidents, number of major incidents, and number of occurring network events are some examples for figures that influence the compliance of service level agreements (SLAs). A service level agreement is defined as “an agreement between an IT service provider and a customer”. This agreement describes service level targets and responsibilities for each party. These figures are compared with the corresponding service level targets. Nowadays, most ITSM systems deliver SLA reports monthly. A real-time dashboard leads to proactive ITSM. Service level managers can react immediately to SLA breaches.

This research project will investigate illustration possibilities for events, incidents, and SLAs. Therefore, the authors will build up a “live” system based on a big event and incident database. The in-situ monitoring of service level agreements (SLAs) will be performed.

Management in the Gaming Industry

Gamification as a Service

Gamification as a Service

On behalf of the Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung.

Promoter:

Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt

Project title:

Gamification as a Service - Konzeptualisierung, Implementierung und Evaluation einer generischen Serviceplattform für Gamification in Geschäftsanwendungen

Project partner:

  • SAP AG, Dresden, Deutschland
  • Flowkey, Berlin, Deutschland

Duration:

01.04.2013 – 31.12.2014  (21 months)

Description:

Gamification is an innovative approach in which game mechanisms are used in non-playful contexts in order to promote engagement and motivation of users in the respective context. Current psychological studies show that such an enrichment of IT systems in the business environment leads to a much higher adoption of software, which in turn can have a positive effect on the effectiveness and efficiency of employees. In addition, gamification can lead to changes in behavior without the need to set extrinsic incentives such as monetary rewards or penalties.

However, the introduction of gaming mechanisms into complex IT systems is associated with high costs, and at the same time the promised benefits cannot be guaranteed. The aim of this work is therefore the construction of a generic and non-invasive platform, which should make it much easier for companies to integrate game mechanisms to promote motivation in existing business applications and to flexibly accompany the design of gamification throughout its life cycle.

Social Media Analytics & Big Data

Trustami

Project title: Trustami 
Motto: Trust Goes Social

Webseitewww.trustami.com 

Funding: EXIST - Gründerstipendium

Duration: Start July 2014 (12 months), Spinn-Off  July 2015


Description:

Trustami aggregates scattered social media information and reviews from various channels, such as ebay, Airbnb and Facebook, under the control of the user and verifies them for use on the Trustami Card. The user receives a platform-independent reputation in the form of a digital certificate of trust, which he can use on the Internet to build trust.

Trustami guarantees the user full data control and enables him to use collected reviews and references anywhere on the Internet. A high level of data transparency and user-friendliness round off the new feeling of trust on the Internet. The Trustami algorithm working in the background is used to analyze and verify the diverse and extensive information.

>> direkt zur App <<

Study: Vertrauen in der Share Economy

Digital Platforms and Business Models

Business models and core capabilities of platform ecosystems for cloud platforms (PaaS)

Due to increasing standardization and modularization, the IT industry also speaks of “servitization”, ie a focus on services instead of products. Traditional software and hardware providers react to this by transforming their business models and increasing service orientation. Platforms play an important role here and represent an essential approach to taking digitization into account. In particular, to meet increasingly complex requirements. Cloud platforms can be understood as the offerings of IaaS, PaaS or SaaS, as well as combinations thereof in connection with management services (e.g. billing, marketplace, etc.). What is essential is the connection with a software-based platform that connects developers of platform-specific modules (e.g. add-ons) with end customers (B2B) or other developers. The platform takes on the role of an intermediary in a bilateral or multilateral market. Prominent examples here are the Salesforce.com App Cloud, Microsoft Azure or the Google Cloud Platform. In particular, the bundling of services and skills as well as the generation of (innovation) value are attributed to platform ecosystems as an advantage over individual companies. For users, however, this means a significant change when purchasing their IT services. For example, several IT service providers can be involved in the provision of a required service.

This gives rise to legal, organizational and technical issues that the research project addresses. Among other things, the value creation potential of a platform compared to the classic value creation network is examined. In the simplest case, an application can be developed on the platform, but this can lead to complex architectures of microsystems that build on one another, which are operated and sold via the platform as a SaaS solution. The innovation potential of these generative systems through their modularization and reusability, as well as the synergetic common value creation (value co-creation) are at the center of the analysis. It is also examined which core capabilities are required and what influence governance (e.g. openness) has on the business model.

Diffusion and strategies of technological platforms in the smart home

Smart home technologies (SH) improve the comfort, safety, health, entertainment, education and communication of people in their home environment. Despite the promising application possibilities, SH technologies have always played a niche role. In contrast, the latest technological and social developments, such as intelligent devices and wearable sensors, the drop in the price of microelectronic components, ubiquitous data processing and broadband availability as well as the digitalization of society are creating new euphoria on the SH market with corresponding growth forecasts. In particular, cross-domain service platforms are said to have the potential to revolutionize the SH market and turn it into a mass market. In this context, a large number of different organizations, including telecommunications companies, IT equipment suppliers and service providers, device manufacturers, home automation specialists, industrial alliances and standardization bodies, are driving the development and establishment of such platforms. Those platforms and the organizations behind them that can assert themselves in this competition for supremacy will have a lasting impact on innovation and competition in the smart home technology field.

In this context, the research project aims to identify factors influencing the diffusion of SH platforms and to derive strategic recommendations for action. In addition to various scientific theories, explanatory approaches from platform ecosystem research are used in order to better understand the emergence of dominant platforms in convergent fields of technology and multi-sided markets.

This gives rise to legal, organizational and technical issues that the research project addresses. Among other things, the value creation potential of a platform compared to the classic value creation network is examined. In the simplest case, an application can be developed on the platform, but this can lead to complex architectures of microsystems that build on one another, which are operated and sold via the platform as a SaaS solution. The innovation potential of these generative systems through their modularization and reusability, as well as the synergetic common value creation (value co-creation) are at the center of the analysis. It is also examined which core capabilities are required and what influence governance (e.g. openness) has on the business model.

Knowledge Discovery and Recommender Systems in Food E-Commerce

Eating, cooking and nutrition are among the central issues of today's information society. As the most popular source of information on these topics, the Internet plays an important role. A large number of content platforms, such as recipe portals, nutritionists, lifestyle magazines, social communities, food blogs and much more, provide a wide variety of information in this regard. At the same time, spending on food totaling around EUR 160 billion in 2015 is by far the largest consumer goods market in Germany. However, the online trade of groceries still faces major barriers compared to other consumer goods segments. In particular, improvements in the product range, ordering process and logistics are required in order to leverage the potential of food e-commerce.

In this context, the research project deals with the question of how the information available on the Internet can be used in an automated manner in order to generate application-specific knowledge for online food retailing. In this regard, the research project pursues an application-oriented approach with the aim of developing IT-supported recommendation services on the basis of knowledge discovery processes and evaluating their problem-solving potential with regard to specific challenges. This approach is implemented in the form of several software projects in which the problem-solving potential of specific recommendation services is to be empirically investigated.

In this context, the research project aims to identify factors influencing the diffusion of SH platforms and to derive strategic recommendations for action. In addition to various scientific theories, explanatory approaches from platform ecosystem research are used in order to better understand the emergence of dominant platforms in convergent fields of technology and multi-sided markets.

This gives rise to legal, organizational and technical issues that the research project addresses. Among other things, the value creation potential of a platform compared to the classic value creation network is examined. In the simplest case, an application can be developed on the platform, but this can lead to complex architectures of microsystems that build on one another that are operated and sold via the platform as a SaaS solution. The innovation potential of these generative systems through their modularization and reusability, as well as the synergetic common value creation (value co-creation) are the focus of the analysis. It is also examined which core capabilities are required and what influence governance (e.g. openness) has on the business model.

Management of Network-Based Telecommunications Services

M2M cellular platform: business modeling

Project title: M2M-Mobilfunk-Plattform

Partner:

  1. Telekom, T-Labs


Duration: 12 months
Start: 2009  

Description:
The aim of the project is the analysis and representation of business processes in the machine to machine (M2M) environment. For this purpose, market data is evaluated and analyzed using appropriate methodologies. In a first step, market data will be collected and analyzed for eleven existing business segments in the mobile M2M area across six T-Mobile countries (Germany, UK, Netherlands, Austria, Czech Republic, Poland). In the second step, business models are derived and market strategies and recommendations are developed.

Areas of responsibility of the chair of ICM include:

  • Market analysis
  • Business model development

Partnering Models for Broadband Access

Project title: Partnering Models for Broadband Access

Partner:

  1. Deutsche Telekom Laboratories


Project Length: 2 years
Start: 2011

Project summary:
The goal of this project is the development of a framework for the telecommunication industry which allows to assess a variety of future value chains and business models with respect to their suitability for a cooperative or competitive strategy. The research takes into account the horizontal and vertical desintegration in telecommunication value chains and investigates the role of cooperation at  horizontal and vertical interfaces of the value layers. In a qualitative assessment phase a strategic analysis of cooperation and competition models is conducted with respect to fixed access. In a quantitative analysis phase techno-economic forecasting methods such as diffusion models, option pricing as well as agent-based computational economics (ACE) are applied to determine market and industry dynamics (e.g. market share, correlation analysis).

Quality of Service (QoS) Business Models

QoS is a means to guarantee the efficiency of future telecommunication networks but also as a driver for business model innovation. In this project, the impact of QoS on future telecommunications business models was discussed. QoS driven business models were analyzed with qualitative and quantitative research methodologies.

Carrier Prospects in the CDN Market

The commercial structure of the Internet is changing. Content delivery networks are becoming potent players in the bandwidth market and are responsible for an ever growing fraction of total Internet traffic. In this project we analyzed the potential of content delivery as a value added service for ISPs to escape the “dumb pipe” scenario.

Prospects for QoS based Internet Services

In the scope of this project, current limitations and potential risks of internet-based data transport were analyzed. Conclusions regarding the business potential of differentiated data transport for internet-based ICT services were drawn.

Enabling Services

The technology-driven convergence of the industries of information technology, telecommunications and media has heavily influenced the development of value-creation structures and business models for the production of ICT services. Formerly vertically integrated telecommunication network operators act now as suppliers of other ICT service providers and are confronted with the challenge of selling their products at different market levels. Here, well-known modular service concepts from the service research area and the IT domain can be applied. On service delivery platforms, ICT service modules, so- called enabling services, are provided for development support. In this project, a conceptualization of enabling services was developed and a procedure for the specification of enabling services was defined.

Analysis of future perspectives of quality in the internet based on Quality-of-Service business models

The transport of data in the Internet, referred to as best-effort-transport, is inefficient from an economical perspective and impedes the emergence of new business models in the internet. A reasonable approach is the enhancement of the best-effort-model by “quality bundles”, consisting of premium content and appropriate QoS-based transport. For the realization of such business models, the billing for such service bundles is recommended to be carried out by the content providers.