World Investment Report

Praise for the Third Edition: "This is one of the best books available. Its excellent organizational structure allows quick reference to specific models and its clear presentation . . . solidifies the understanding of the concepts being presented."IIE Transactions on Operations EngineeringThoroughly revised and expanded to reflect the latest developments in the field, Fundamentals of Queueing Theory, Fourth Edition continues to present the basic statistical principles that are necessary to analyze the probabilistic nature of queues. Rather than presenting a narrow focus on the subject, this update illustrates the wide-reaching, fundamental concepts in queueing theory and its applications to diverse areas such as computer science, engineering, business, and operations research.This update takes a numerical approach to understanding and making probable estimations relating to queues, with a comprehensive outline of simple and more advanced queueing models. Newly featured topics of the Fourth Edition include:Retrial queuesApproximations for queueing networksNumerical inversion of transformsDetermining the appropriate number of servers to balance quality and cost of serviceEach chapter provides a self-contained presentation of key concepts and formulae, allowing readers to work with each section independently, while a summary table at the end of the book outlines the types of queues that have been discussed and their results. In addition, two new appendices have been added, discussing transforms and generating functions as well as the fundamentals of differential and difference equations. New examples are now included along with problems that incorporate QtsPlus software, which is freely available via the book's related Web site.With its accessible style and wealth of real-world examples, Fundamentals of Queueing Theory, Fourth Edition is an ideal book for courses on queueing theory at the upper-undergraduate and graduate levels. It is also a valuable resource for researchers and practitioners who analyze congestion in the fields of telecommunications, transportation, aviation, and management science.

Fundamentals of Queueing Theory

Recent years have witnessed a surge of interest in the notion of capabilities as an important source of competitive advantage. This recognition has, in turn, placed emphasis on the question of where and how these capabilities emerge and how they influence firm performance. The present paper is an attempt to address this question. Using a large sample of detailed project level data from a leading firm in the global software services industry, we attempt to empirically study the importance of capabilities. We find that two broad classes of capabilities are significant. The first class, which we label client-specific capabilities, is a function of repeated interactions with clients over time and across different projects. This learning from repeated interactions with a given client reduces project execution costs and helps improve project contribution. The second class, termed project management capabilities, are acquired through deliberate and persistent investments in infrastructure and systems to improve the firm's software development process. Our empirical results suggest that the marginal returns to acquiring different capabilities may be different and an understanding of such trade-offs can improve firm decisions to improve and/or acquire such capabilities. We discuss the key contributions of our paper and the implications for future research on capabilities.

Where Do Capabilities Come From and How Do They Matter? A Study in the Software Services Industry

Recent years have witnessed a surge of interest in the notion of capabilities as an important source of competitive advantage. This recognition has, in turn, placed emphasis on the question of where and how these capabilities emerge and how they influence firm performance. The present paper is an attempt to address this question. Using a large sample of detailed project-level data from a leading firm in the global software services industry, we attempt to empirically study the importance of capabilities. We find that two broad classes of capabilities are significant. The first class, which we label client-specific capabilities, is a function of repeated interactions with clients over time and across different projects. This learning from repeated interactions with a given client reduces project execution costs and helps improve project contribution. The second class, termed project management capabilities, is acquired through deliberate and persistent investments in infrastructure and systems to improve the firm's software development process. Our empirical results suggest that the marginal returns to acquiring different capabilities may be different and an understanding of such trade-offs can improve firm decisions to improve and/or acquire such capabilities. We discuss the key contributions of our paper and the implications for future research on capabilities. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

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Where do capabilities come from and how do they matter? A study in the software services industry

It has been argued that platform technology owners co-create business value with other firms in their platform ecosystems by encouraging complementary invention and exploiting indirect network effects. In this study we examine whether participation in an ecosystem partnership improves the business performance of small independent software vendors (ISVs) in the enterprise software industry and how appropriability mechanisms influence the benefits of partnership. By analyzing the partnering activities and performance indicators of a sample of 1210 small ISVs over the period of 1996-2004, we find that joining a major platform owner’s platform ecosystem is associated with an increase in sales and a greater likelihood of issuing an IPO. In addition, we show that these impacts are greater when ISVs have greater intellectual property rights or stronger downstream capabilities. This research highlights the value of interoperability between software products, and stresses that value co-creation and appropriation are not mutually exclusive strategies in inter-firm collaboration.

Co-Creation of Value in a Platform Ecosystem: The Case of Enterprise Software

The Indian software services industry

The benefits of a software system are assessable only relative to the business goals the system has been developed to serve. In turn, these benefits result from interactions between the system's functionality and its quality attributes (such as performance, reliabilty and security). Its quality attributes are, in most cases, dictated by its architectural design decisions. Therefore, we argue in this paper that the software architecture is the crucial artifact to study in making design tradeoffs and in performing cost-benefit analyses. A substantial part of such an analysis is in determining the level of uncertainty with which we estimate both costs and benefits. In this paper we offer an architecture-centric approach to the economic modeling of software design decision making called CBAM (Cost Benefit Analysis Method), in which costs and benefits are traded off with system quality attributes. We present the CBAM, the early results from applying this method in a large-scale case study, and discuss the application of more sophisticated economic models to software decision making.

Quantifying the costs and benefits of architectural decisions

: The resources available to build any system are finite. The decisions involved in building any nontrivial system are complex and typically involve many stakeholders, many requirements, and many technical decisions. The stakeholders have an interest in ensuring that good design decisions are made decisions that meet their technical objectives and their tolerance for risk. These decisions should, as much as possible, maximize the benefit that the system provides and minimize its cost. The Cost Benefit Analysis Method (CBAM) was created to provide some structure to this decision-making process. The CBAM analyzes architectural decisions from the perspectives of cost, benefit, schedule, and risk. While the CBAM does not make decisions for the stakeholders, it does serve as a tool to inform managers and to structure the inquiry so that rational decisions can be made. This report describes the steps of the CBAM and its application to a real-world system.

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Making Architecture Design Decisions: An Economic Approach

This paper provides an analytical description of the Indian software industry, with a special focus on the software exports from India. We use a variety of sources, including a questionnaire survey of Indian software firms, and field visits and interviews with industry participants, observers, and US based clients. The Indian software industry is remarkable in a number of respects. It is service rather than product oriented, heavily export oriented, and is largely managed by professional and entrepreneurial managements. Also, domestic market experience and expertise appears to have had only limited benefits for successful importers. Although the industry has grown in spectacular fashion, sustaining this performance will pose a number of challenges. In order to counteract the widely reported shortages of skilled software professionals and the possible competition from other low wage, human capital rich countries, Indian firms are trying to move up the value chain by acquiring deeper knowledge of business domains and management capability, and to reduce costs by developing superior methodologies and tools. Whether and how many firms will be a key test of the management skills and willingness to invest along a number of dimensions. From a social perspective, the disconnect between domestic and export markets is a major challenge, but one that the growing diffusion of computers and the improvement of the communication infrastructure should make easier to confront. In the end, the greatest impact the software industry is likely to have on the Indian economy is indirect, in its role as an exemplar of the new business organisational form and as an inspiration to other entrepreneurs.

The Indian Software Services Industry

This paper reports on the results of research on the Indian software industry, carried out at Carnegie Mellon University. We use a variety of sources, including a questionnaire survey of Indian software firms, and field visits and interviews with industry participants, observers, and US based clients. The Indian software industry is remarkable in a number of respects. It is service rather than product oriented, heavily export oriented, and is largely managed by professional and entrepreneurial managements. Also, domestic market experience and expertise appears to have very little benefits for successful importers. Although the industry has grown in spectacular fashion, sustaining this performance will pose a number of challenges. In order to counteract the widely reported shortages of skilled software professionals and the possible competition from other low wage, human capital rich countries, Indian firms are trying to move up the value chain by acquiring deeper knowledge of business domains and management capability, and to reduce costs by developing superior methodologies and tools. Whether and how many firms will be a key test of the management skills and willingness to invest along a number of dimensions. From a social perspective, the disconnect between domestic and export markets is a major challenge, but one that the growing diffusion of computers and the improvement of the communication infrastructure should make easier to confront. In the end, the greatest impact the software industry is likely to have on the Indian economy is indirect, in its role as an exemplar of the new business organisational form and as an inspiration to other entrepreneurs.

/pdf/the-indian-software-industry-ms5ne42xj7.pdf

Jai Asundi

Papers

The Indian software services industry

Quantifying the costs and benefits of architectural decisions

Making Architecture Design Decisions: An Economic Approach

The Indian Software Services Industry

The Indian Software Industry