This book reflects the tremendous changes in the telecommunications industry in the course of the past few decades – shorter innovation cycles, stiffer competition and new communication products. It analyzes the transformation of processes, applications and network technologies that are now expected to take place under enormous time pressure. The International Telecommunication Union (ITU) and the TM Forum have provided reference solutions that are broadly recognized and used throughout the value chain of the telecommunications industry, and which can be considered the de facto standard. The book describes how these reference solutions can be used in a practical context: it presents the latest insights into their development, highlights lessons learned from numerous international projects and combines them with well-founded research results in enterprise architecture management and reference modeling. The complete architectural transformation is explained, from the planning and set-up stage to the implementation. Featuring a wealth of examples and illustrations, the book offers a valuable resource for telecommunication professionals, enterprise architects and project managers alike.

This book proposes for the first time the concept of communication 4.0, exploring its nature in detail, and offering predictions for the future development of the telecommunication industry. Based on an in-depth analysis of hierarchical communications requirements, it applies Maslow’s Model to telecommunication and illustrates the model’s five degrees.

This book constitutes the proceedings of the 12th International Conference on Design Science Research in Information Systems and Technology, DESRIST 2017, held in May/June 2017 in Karlsruhe, Germany. The 25 full and 11 short papers presented in this volume were carefully reviewed and selected from 66 full and 19 short papers. The contributions are organized in topical sections named: DSR in business process management; DSR in human computer interaction; DSR in data science and business analytics; DSR in service science; methodological contributions; domain-specific DSR applications; emerging themes and new ideas; and products and prototypes.

A complete reference for designing and building scalable microservices platforms with NATS messaging technology for inter-service communication with security and observability Key FeaturesUnderstand the use of a messaging backbone for inter-service communication in microservices architectureDesign and build a real-world microservices platform with NATS as the messaging backbone using the Go programming languageExplore security, observability, and best practices for building a microservices platform with NATSBook Description Building a scalable microservices platform that caters to business demands is critical to the success of that platform. In a microservices architecture, inter-service communication becomes a bottleneck when the platform scales. This book provides a reference architecture along with a practical example of how to implement it for building microservices-based platforms with NATS as the messaging backbone for inter-service communication. In Designing Microservices Platforms with NATS, you'll learn how to build a scalable and manageable microservices platform with NATS. The book starts by introducing concepts relating to microservices architecture, inter-service communication, messaging backbones, and the basics of NATS messaging. You'll be introduced to a reference architecture that uses these concepts to build a scalable microservices platform and guided through its implementation. Later, the book touches on important aspects of platform securing and monitoring with the help of the reference implementation. Finally, the book concludes with a chapter on best practices to follow when integrating with existing platforms and the future direction of microservices architecture and NATS messaging as a whole. By the end of this microservices book, you'll have developed the skills to design and implement microservices platforms with NATS. What you will learnUnderstand the concepts of microservices architectureGet to grips with NATS messaging technologyHandle transactions and message delivery guarantees with microservicesImplement a reference architecture for microservices using NATSDiscover how to improve the platform's security and observabilityExplore how a NATS microservices platform integrates with an enterprise ecosystemWho this book is for This book is for enterprise software architects and developers who want to gain hands-on microservices experience for designing, implementing, and managing complex distributed systems with microservices architecture concepts. Intermediate-level experience in any programming language and software architecture is required to make the most of this book.

While acquisitions and expansion strategies are understood as exciting in the business world, contraction activities are received less enthusiastically. Nevertheless, portfolio restructuring constitutes a strategic tool to increase the strategic focus of firms and achieve economies of scale and an efficient control of multiple business units. This restructuring thus has distinct implications for companies and units. The Handbook of Research on Corporate Restructuring and Globalization provides emerging research on the theoretical infrastructure for portfolio restructuring in a single piece of work and explores important topics in the field including the implications on foreign and domestic units and the degree to which increasing globalization influences restructuring practices. Featuring coverage on a broad range of topics such as emerging markets, risk assessment, and global business, this book is ideally designed for corporate managers, government officials, scholars, researchers, and students.

This book is the first to present a rich selection of over 30 real-world cases of how leading organizations conduct Business Process Management (BPM). The cases stem from a diverse set of industry sectors and countries on different continents, reporting on best practices and lessons learned. The book showcases how BPM can contribute to both exploitation and exploration in a digital world. All cases are presented using a uniform structure in order to provide valuable insights and essential guidance for students and practitioners.

This book presents a rich compilation of real-world cases on digitalization, the goal being to share first-hand insights from respected organizations and to make digitalization more tangible. As virtually every economic and societal sector is now being challenged by emerging technologies, the digital economy is a highly volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous place – and one that holds substantial challenges and opportunities for established organizations. Against this backdrop, this book reports on best practices and lessons learned from organizations that have succeeded in overcoming the challenges and seizing the opportunities of the digital economy. It illustrates how twenty-one organizations have leveraged their capabilities to create disruptive innovations, to develop digital business models, and to digitally transform themselves. These cases stem from various industries (e.g. automotive, insurance, consulting, and public services) and countries, reflecting the many facets of digitalization. As all case descriptions follow a uniform schema, they are easily accessible, and provide insightful examples for practitioners as well as interesting cases for researchers, teachers and students. Digitalization is reshaping business on a global scale, and it is evident that organizations must transform to thrive in the digital economy. Digitalization Cases provides first-hand insights into the efforts of renowned companies. The presented actions, results, and lessons learned are a great inspiration for managers, students, and academics. Anna Kopp, Head of IT Germany, Microsoft Understanding digitalization in all its facets requires knowledge about its opportunities and challenges in different contexts. Providing 21 cases from different companies all around the world, Digitalization Cases makes an important contribution toward the comprehensibility of digitalization – from a practical and a scientific point of view. Dorothy Leidner, Ferguson Professor of Information Systems, Baylor University This book is a great source of inspiration and insight on how to drive digitalization. It shows easy to understand good practice examples which illustrate opportunities, and at the same time helps to learn what needs to be done to realize them. I consider this book a must-read for every practitioner who cares about digitalization. Martin Petry, Chief Information Officer and Head of Business Excellence, Hilti

Value Creation and its effects on Transfer Pricing and tax law Emerging from the OECD/G20 BEPS Project, a new, somewhat fuzzy notion of Value Creation came to permeate not only Transfer Pricing language but also wider allocation rules and anti-abuse provisions in international tax law. The notion of ‘Value Creation’ reframes the interpretation and application of the Arm’s Length Principle (ALP) that is embedded in Articles 7 and 9 of the OECD Model Convention. This new Value Creation notion and approach assist in understanding key enterprise functions while different industry sectors manifest these concepts in various ways. Situating such notions and this approach within the law of tax treaties and analyzing terms of the OECD Transfer Pricing Guidelines alongside their factual context is the aim of this book. Here, law students address Transfer Pricing and Value Creation in sectors as varied as commodities trade, automotive, consumer products, food and beverages, pharmaceutical and life sciences, telecommunications, and the key topic of value creation in a digitalized economy. Our LL.M. students were required to address issues not explored in legal research and to discuss factual topics relevant for Transfer Pricing. All students focused on topics that are new to the international tax debate that keep evolving and on factual matters that often escape legal research.

Process-Driven SOA: Patterns for Aligning Business and IT supplies detailed guidance on how to design and build software architectures that follow the principles of business-IT alignment. It illustrates the design process using proven patterns that address complex business/technical scenarios, where integrated concepts of service-oriented architecture (SOA), Business Process Management (BPM), and Event-Driven Architecture (EDA) are required. The book demonstrates that SOA is not limited to technical issues but instead, is a holistic challenge where aspects of SOA, EDA, and BPM must be addressed together. An ideal guide for SOA solution architects, designers, developers, managers, and students about to enter the field, the book: Provides an accessible introduction to basic and more advanced concepts in process-driven SOA Illustrates how to manage the complexities of business aligned IT architectures with detailed examples and industry cases Outlines a step-by-step design process using proven patterns to address complex business/ technical scenarios Integrates SOA, BPM, and EDA into practical patterns promoting SOA 2.0 Describing how to synchronize parallel enterprise processes, the authors explain how to cope with the architectural and design decisions you are likely to encounter when designing and implementing process-driven SOA systems. The decisions are described in the form of software patterns to provide you with a practical guideline for addressing key problems using time-tested solutions.

The Internet of Edges is a new paradigm whose objective is to keep data and processing close to the user. This book presents three different levels of Edge networking: MEC (Multi-access Edge Computing), Fog and Far Edge (sometimes called Mist or Skin). It also reviews participatory networks, in which user equipment provides the resources for the Edge network. Edge networks can be disconnected from the core Internet, and the interconnection of autonomous edge networks can then form the Internet of Edges. This book analyzes the characteristics of Edge networks in detail, showing their capacity to replace the imposing Clouds of core networks due to their superior server response time, data security and energy saving.