This paper reports on the development and application of an instrument to evaluate the overall IT fitness of medium sized enterprises. The instrument was designed in 1997 as part of an applied research project with the close co-operation of scientists and consultants, as well as various market...

Data is becoming more and more of a commodity, so that it is not surprising that data has reached the status of tradable goods. An increasing number of data providers is recognizing this and is consequently setting up platforms that deserve the term 'marketplace' for data. We identify several...

Application development of is commonly a balancing of interests, as the question of what should actually be implemented is answered differently by different stakeholders. This paper considers mashups, which are a way of allowing an application to grow beyond the capabilities of the original...

The core purpose of strategic information planning (SIP) lies in identifying future directions for investments in information technology, information systems and information supply that will assist an organisation to realise its business goals. SIP is a critical challenge and major concern to...

Information Technology (IT) strategy is a top-priority issue in practice. However, despite its practical relevance, research on IT strategy has been limited so far. With respect to the definition of an IT strategy and its scope, there are a number of ad hoc recommendations and a few conceptual...

In practice the ability to find the right Web service decides between a functionality being implemented anew and at least the possibility of executing it via a service. This report evaluates existing public portals for Web service discovery with respect to their characteristics and their...

This essay gives an overview of the special features of funding foreign subsidiaries. The central issue discussed is the possibility of funding by equity capital borrowed capital in the form of loans and trade accounts payable. Various envirenmental settings are introduced which lead to...

Since the beginning of the 1990s the shareholder value concept is discussed intensively as being a management concept especially for listed enterprises. In contrast to the immense relevance of small and medium enterprises (SME) for the German economy, value orientation of the management of SMEs...