Showing papers on "Service level objective published in 2002"

Providing database as a service

Abstract: We explore a novel paradigm for data management in which a third party service provider hosts "database as a service", providing its customers with seamless mechanisms to create, store, and access their databases at the host site. Such a model alleviates the need for organizations to purchase expensive hardware and software, deal with software upgrades, and hire professionals for administrative and maintenance tasks which are taken over by the service provider. We have developed and deployed a database service on the Internet, called NetDB2, which is in constant use. In a sense, a data management model supported by NetDB2 provides an effective mechanism for organizations to purchase data management as a service, thereby freeing them to concentrate on their core businesses. Among the primary challenges introduced by "database as a service" are the additional overhead of remote access to data, an infrastructure to guarantee data privacy, and user interface design for such a service. These issues are investigated. We identify data privacy as a particularly vital problem and propose alternative solutions based on data encryption. The paper is meant as a challenge for the database community to explore a rich set of research issues that arise in developing such a service.

Client Co-Production in Knowledge-Intensive Business Services:

Abstract: A common characteristic of knowledge-intensive business service (KIBS) firms is that clients routinely play a critical role in co-producing the service solution along with the service provider. This can have a profound effect on both the quality of the service delivered as well as the client's ultimate satisfaction with the knowledge-based service solution. Based on research conducted with an IT consulting firm and work done with other knowledge-intensive business service providers, this article describes clients' key role responsibilities that are essential for effective client co-production in KIBS partnerships. It then presents strategies that service providers can use to manage clients so they perform their roles effectively. By strategically managing client co-production, service providers can improve operational efficiency, develop more optimal solutions, and generate a sustainable competitive advantage.

Determinants of trust in a service provider: the moderating role of length of relationship

Abstract: Trust is a key factor in the establishment of long‐term relationships between service representatives and their customers. Prior research has documented that both “person‐related” (e.g. empathy, politeness and customer/service representative similarity) and “offer‐related” (customization, competence, reliability and promptness) service representative characteristics have an impact on trust. However, the relative importance of these characteristics, and in some cases the direction of their relationships with trust, has varied across studies. In this paper, we posit a contingency model of trust, suggesting that the effects of the above variables on trust are moderated by length of the customer/service provider relationship. Our model is tested in a business‐to‐business context by means of a mail survey involving 677 small business owners. The small business owners provided data about their relationships with their insurance industry service providers. Our results demonstrate how service representatives and firms can work toward the establishment of trust with their clients under varying market conditions.

Service excellence in electronic channels

Abstract: Significant research and managerial attention has been devoted to service excellence over the last 20 years. We now need to focus some of that attention on service delivery through electronic channels. Evidence indicates that service is critical to online customers and that it is generally poor. The premise of this article is that we must understand how the customer evaluates electronic service quality as a foundation for improving delivery. This article discusses the definition, conceptualization and measurement of electronic service quality, then offers some ideas for future research.

Web service syndication system

Abstract: A syndicator for disseminating Web services and other resources from service and content providers to service consumers and for establishing and implementing subscription agreements specifying the terms upon which digital assets are provided to subscribers. A registration database stores a service description for each of a plurality of different Web services and other resources. Each stored service description contains an input processing specification, an output processing specification, and the specification of the business terms upon which the described service or resource is offered by its provider to subscribers. A subscription manager conducts a negotiation with a prospective subscriber and receives from the subscriber an acceptance of the business terms upon which a specified Web service or resource is offered to establish a subscription agreement. Event tracking records information describing the performance of each service on behalf of each subscriber to perform subscription accounting functions.

Technology‐enabled service delivery: An investigation of reasons affecting customer adoption and rejection

Abstract: The use of technology to enable or facilitate the delivery of services has the potential to benefit customers and service providers alike. Correspondingly, however, the purposes to which technology is put, and the manner in which it is used, also has the potential to disenfranchise customers. Therefore the operational desirability and gains of any employment of technology to facilitate service provision should be balanced against the perceptions and behavioural response of customers. Our research aims to shed light on the reasons why customers adopt or reject technologically facilitated means of service delivery, and to develop a means by which likely adoption or rejection may be predicted. The research we have undertaken to date suggests that adoption or rejection of technologically facilitated services is moderated by the personal capacity and willingness of individuals.

Auction, imagery and retaining engine systems for services and service providers

Abstract: The present disclosure provides a computer-implemented method/system (see fig. 1) for facilitating communications between service providers and potential customers for services. The system provides a marketplace for interactions, both online and off-line, between service providers (150,152,156) and potential customers, including purchasing groups, particularly buyer-driven service related interactions. The marketplace advantageously allows categorizations, key word searching, group purchasing, service packaging, data mining, auctions and other commercial features and functionality. Service providers are able to efficiently extend the reach of their marketing and promotional activities to many customers, and customers are able to initiate access service providers suited to meet their needs producing buyer-driven commerce.

Using Control Theory to Achieve Service Level Objectives In Performance Management

Abstract: A widely used approach to achieving service level objectives for a software system (eg, an email server) is to add a controller that manipulates the target system’s tuning parameters We describe a methodology for designing such controllers for software systems that builds on classical control theory The classical approach proceeds in two steps: system identification and controller design In system identification, we construct mathematical models of the target system Traditionally, this has been based on a first-principles approach, using detailed knowledge of the target system Such models can be complex and difficult to build, validate, use, and maintain In our methodology, a statistical (ARMA) model is fit to historical measurements of the target being controlled These models are easier to obtain and use and allow us to apply control-theoretic design techniques to a larger class of systems When applied to a Lotus Notes groupware server, we obtain model-fits with R^{2} no lower than 75% and as high as 98% In controller design, an analysis of the models leads to a controller that will achieve the service level objectives We report on an analysis of a closed-loop system using an integral control law with Lotus Notes as the target The objective is to maintain a reference queue length Using root-locus analysis from control theory, we are able to predict the occurrence (or absence) of controller-induced oscillations in the system’s response Such oscillations are undesirable since they increase variability, thereby resulting in a failure to meet the service level objective We implement this controller for a real Lotus Notes system, and observe a remarkable correspondence between the behavior of the real system and the predictions of the analysis This indicates that the control theoretic analysis is sufficient to select controller parameters that meet the desired goals, and the need for simulations is reduced

Electronic identifier payment systems and methods

Abstract: A payment service method and system involve a payment service provider, a customer/payor and a consumer provider/payee. The customer/payor enrolls in the service and is provided a unique identifier that enables the customer to conduct transactions with the payment service provider. The customer/payor interfaces with the payment service provider through various forms of communication, and can facilitate payments to the consumer providers/payees through the payment service provider while remaining anonymous.

SYSTRA‐SQ: a new measure of bank service quality

Abstract: We describe the development of a new scale designed to measure service quality perceptions of retail bank customers. Empirical studies were performed in two waves. First, qualitative research was undertaken in the form of seven focus groups and 39 one‐to‐one interviews. These produced 963 text items that described customers’ service quality perceptions. These were categorised against the technical and functional service quality schema proposed by Gronroos. Then, a three‐phase, four‐sample, quantitative study was undertaken to derive a quantitative measure of technical and functional service quality. We have developed and validated a new 21‐item scale comprising four dimensions: service system quality, behavioural service quality, service transactional accuracy, and machine service quality. We found that customers evaluate SQ at two levels: organisational and transactional. The parsimony, reliability and validity of the scale suggest this is a measure of high utility to the banking industry.

Convergent communications platform and method for mobile and electronic commerce in a heterogeneous network environment

Abstract: A method and apparatus for providing mobile and electronic commerce, customer care and communication services via networks, including receiving in a roaming network an identification number and a request for a service, forwarding to a home network the identification number, the request for the service, and a cost/rate of the service, verifying, by a convergent communication platform located on the home network, that the identification number relates to a valid user account, that a user device is authorized to receive the service, and that the valid user account has sufficient value, providing an authorization to the service provider, and charging the valid user account on a real time basis. The convergent communications system employs a rule set usable in determining at least one rule applicable for authorizing a transaction and debiting an account of the authorized user according to the at least one rule, in real time.

Conceptual model of web service reputation

Abstract: Current Web services standards enable publishing service descriptions and finding services on a match based on criteria such as method signatures or service category. However, current approaches provide no basis for selecting a good service or for comparing ratings of services. We describe a conceptual model for reputation using which reputation information can be organized and shared and service selection can be facilitated and automated.

Service quality in Internet banking: the importance of customer role

Abstract: One of the key challenges of the Internet as a service delivery channel is how service firms can manage service quality as these remote formats bring significant change in customer interaction and behaviour. Drawing on theoretical frameworks of service quality and adapting these to particularly reflect the remote delivery format of the Internet, this study proposes and tests a service quality model of Internet banking. The research uses participant observation and narrative analysis of a UK Internet banking Web site community to explore how Internet banking customers perceive and interpret the elements of the model. Findings show that the level and nature of customer participation had the greatest impact on the quality of the service experience and issues such as customers’ zone of tolerance, the degree of role understanding by customers and emotional response potentially determined, expected and perceived service quality.

Service quality in the Thai telecommunication industry: a tool for achieving a sustainable competitive advantage

Abstract: The objectives of this paper are to provide an overview of service quality and discuss its potential for offering a competitive advantage; to test several research propositions concerning service quality in the Thai telecommunications industry; and to offer managerial implications of the study’s findings and provide directions for future research. The results indicated that perceptions and expectations of service quality level showed no significant difference. A post hoc analysis found that the telecommunication industry received excellent ratings on tangibles, particularly customer service staff’s dress, and low ratings on empathy, particularly service providers’ interest differences. Tangibles are an aspect of service quality that is extremely important to the Thai telecommunication customer. This study provides evidence supporting the proposition that consumers distinguish between the performance cues of customer‐contact employee groups. Service delivery systems should create positive moments of truth by ensuring that the point of customers’ contact is reduced to a minimum.

Construction Product/Service and Customer Satisfaction

Abstract: Construction has typically been viewed as a production process, with the product being the completed facility. In addition to providing this product, contractors also provide service. Construction is examined in terms of the service product, service delivery, and service environment. The concept of service encounters is examined in the context of perceived quality and customer satisfaction. Determinants of service quality are analyzed in terms of how they influence perceived quality. The relationship between the criteria used by customers in choosing suppliers and the factors driving satisfaction are examined, and results of two studies of factors involved in contractor selection and satisfaction are reviewed. These factors are the contractor-customer relationship, the contractor's project management skills, the contractor's safety performance, whether the contractor has a prepared/skilled workforce, and the cost of the work.

Towards Automated SLA Management for Web Services

Abstract: In order to automate SLA management it is essential to specify SLAs in precise and unambiguous manner as well as keep the specification flexible. While precision will help automate the process of monitoring and metric collection, flexibility will enable extending it to unforeseen service level agreement specifications.

Integrated resource management for cluster-based internet services

Abstract: Client request rates for Internet services tend to be bursty and thus it is important to maintain efficient resource utilization under a wide range of load conditions. Network service clients typically seek services interactively and maintaining reasonable response time is often imperative for such services. In addition, providing differentiated service qualities and resource allocation to multiple service classes can also be desirable at times. This paper presents an integrated resource management framework (part of Neptune system) that provides flexible service quality specification, efficient resource utilization, and service differentiation for cluster-based services. This framework introduces the metric of quality-aware service yield to combine the overall system efficiency and individual service response time in one flexible model. Resources are managed through a two-level request distribution and scheduling scheme. At the cluster level, a fully decentralized request distribution architecture is employed to achieve high scalability and availability. Inside each service node, an adaptive scheduling policy maintains efficient resource utilization under a wide range of load conditions. Our trace-driven evaluations demonstrate the performance, scalability, and service differentiation achieved by the proposed techniques.

Perception Gaps in Customer Expectations: Managers Versus Service Providers and Customers

Abstract: Two new gaps are added to the 5-gap model proposed by PZB. These new gaps reflect the differences in the understanding of customer expectations by manager and front-line service providers and in customer expectations and service providers' perception of such expectations. Using room service as the object for investigation, the present study provides empirical evidence indicating the existence of these gaps which have negative impact on overall service quality. The findings also disclose that the gap between customer expectations and managers' perception of such expectations is much larger than the gap between customer expectations and service providers' understanding of such expectations.

Dynamic benchmarking of hotel service quality

Abstract: Total customer satisfaction is one of the most important strategic weapons of best‐practice hotel organizations. However, hotel organizations cannot achieve total customer satisfaction without gaining the knowledge of a hotel’s competitive position in the changing marketplace and realizing the opportunity of continuous service improvement. With this in mind, this paper develops a set of service benchmarks that help hotel managers monitor their service delivery process, identify performance gaps, and take corrective action. In particular, we propose dynamic benchmarking based on the analytic hierarchy process (AHP) that goes beyond traditional service performance measures. Based on the longitudinal surveys of customers who have stayed at first‐class hotels in Korea, this paper illustrates the usefulness of dynamic benchmarking for continuous service improvement.

The relationship between management's perception of total quality service and customer perceptions of service quality

Abstract: The effectiveness of quality management programmes at resulting in enhanced business performance has been a major subject of interest for business and academia alike. In service organizations, customer-perceived service quality is considered as one of the key determinants of business performance. The current study strives to examine the influence of total quality service (TQS) dimensions on customer-perceived service quality. Multiple regression analysis has been used to investigate the relationship between the different dimensions of TQS and the various factors of service quality. The results have indicated that the TQS dimensions, as a whole, are indeed good predictors of service quality. Furthermore, the soft issues of TQS (such as human resource management, customer focus, service culture, employee satisfaction, top management commitment and leadership and social responsibility) seem to be more vital than do hard issues in positively influencing customer-perceived service quality.

Facilitating management of service elements usable in providing information technology service offerings

Abstract: A service element is defined and represented by a data structure. It includes one or more components and/or one or more other service elements. A service element providing a complete function is a service offering. Management of service elements and/or service offerings is facilitated by a Service Development Tool. In different aspects, the management includes various tasks associated with creating, modifying and deleting service elements, establishing relationships, error checking and optimization. In a further aspect, service elements are packaged and distributed to enable customers to deliver the service elements. Additionally, the hosting of software packages is facilitated.

Location-based notification as a general-purpose service

Abstract: An often-discussed mobile commerce application is proximity-based coupon delivery. In a typical scenario a merchant is notified when a valued customer is within some distance of a retail outlet, upon which the customer is delivered a coupon or some notice of a special promotion. We believe that this basic mechanism of location-based notification has application far beyond commercial promotion, and is also of interest for tourism, traffic information, public service, and public safety. Furthermore, we believe that a general-purpose location-based notification service that can serve all these applications would be highly useful. However, as we will show, current architectures deployed by wireless carriers to service location-aware applications cannot handle the load of positioning requests implied by such a general-purpose service. We motivate the need for such a service, discuss the limitations of current architectures for providing location information, and detail the requirements for an architecture which would make such a service possible.

Leveraging technology to improve field service

Abstract: The primary objective of this paper is to propose a theoretical framework for assessing the role and influence of technology in creating an effective field service organization. We examine the role of technology in the context of managing relationships among the company, its employees and customers. Using the analogy of a country managing its foreign affairs, we suggest that consistent and concurrent attention to carrying out Diplomacy, Preparedness and Engagement responsibilities with the aid of Technology (DPEAT) would result in superior service outcomes. We illustrate implementing our framework in a field service organization and use a published case study to demonstrate the application of our model.

Context-aware market-making service

Abstract: A mobile virtual network operators system is disclosed. The mobile virtual network operators system provides a single point of contact for wireless customers accessing a variety of services offered by a plurality of vendors. The mobile virtual network operators system may generate a sales proposal for a customer or a vendor and handle a proposal generated by a customer or a vendor. The mobile virtual network operators system may include a vendor database and a customer database. The mobile virtual network operators system receives, records and analyzes plurality of the customer's product search requests to form the customer's context aware purchase history. The customer database may store accumulated context aware purchase histories for a plurality of customers. The mobile virtual network operators system may generate a solicitation proposal for a customer based on the customer's context aware purchase history. The mobile virtual network operators system can anticipate customer's needs in advance and can generate a proposal accordingly.

Defining and Monitoring Service-Level Agreements for Dynamic e-Business

Abstract: Fueled by the growing acceptance of the Web Services Architecture, an emerging trend in application service delivery is to move away from tightly coupled systems towards structures of loosely coupled, dynamically bound systems to support both long and short business relationships. It appears highly likely that the next generation of e-Business systems will consist of an interconnection of services, each provided by a possibly different service provider, that are put together on an "on demand" basis to offer an end to end service to a customer.Such an environment, which we call Dynamic e-Business (DeB), will be administered and managed according to dynamically negotiated Service Level Agreements (SLA) between service providers and customers. Consequently, system administration will increasingly become SLA-driven and needs to address challenges such as dynamically determining whether enough spare capacity is available to accommodate additional SLAs, the negotiation of SLA terms and conditions, the continuous monitoring of a multitude of agreed-upon SLA parameters and the troubleshooting of systems, based on their importance for achieving business objectives.A key prerequisite for meeting these goals is to understand the relationship between the cost of the systems an administrator is responsible for and the revenue they are able to generate, i.e., a model needs to be in place to express system resources in financial terms. Today, this is usually not the case.In order to address some of these problems, this paper presents the Web Service Level Agreement (WSLA) framework for defining and monitoring SLAs in inter-domain environments. The framework consists of a flexible and extensible language based on the XML schema and a runtime architecture based on several SLA monitoring services, which may be outsourced to third parties to ensure a maximum of accuracy.WSLA enables service customers and providers to unambiguously define a wide variety of SLAs, specify the SLA parameters and the way how they are measured, and tie them to managed resource instrumentations. A Java-based implementation of this framework, termed SLA Compliance Monitor, is publicly available as part of the IBM Web Services Toolkit.

Execution of process by references to directory service

Abstract: Service registration, discovery, connectivity, and administration are provided on a computer network. The invention includes a directory service, a service provider service, and a consumer provided service. A first software component registers as a service with a directory service process executing on a second computer, and the directory service process creates a registration for the first component of software. A second component of software executes on a third computer and communicates to the directory service process, a request to access and interact with the first software component. The directory service process responds by locating the registration entry for the first component of software, and facilitates communication with the first component of software on behalf of the second component of software. Services may include software engine service, authentication service, generic front end loading service, payment connection service, a data sharing service, medical test results reporting service, data store forwarding service, physician pharmaceutical service, academic transcript service, public office election service, medical records service, resume matching service, company credit reporting service, a prepay service, translation service, and an environment service.

Providing quality of service in a telecommunications system such as a UMTS of other third generation system

Abstract: A telecommunications network comprises of network resources including at least one service domain which has a user's terminal. There is a controller operative to control transmissions of a data stream from or to the user's terminal with a predetermined quality of service. The quality of service depends on the terms of a service level agreement between the user and the service domain, processed by the controller into a set of policies to be applied. The policies include dynamic selection and allocation of the network resources so as to transmit the data stream with the expected quality of service.

Managing dynamic services: a contract based approach to a conceptual architecture

Abstract: This paper describes a novel contract based approach for defining, deploying, monitoring and enforcing service level agreements (SLA) in a dynamic e-business environment. The current trend in application service delivery is to move away from tightly coupled systems towards structures of loosely coupled, dynamically bound systems with long and short business relationships. It appears highly likely that the next generation of e-business systems will consist of an interconnection of services, each provided by a possibly different service provider, that are coupled together to offer an end to end service to a customer. Such an environment, which we call dynamic e-business (DeB), will be governed by dynamically negotiated electronic contracts between service providers and service customers. From a management viewpoint, this development poses new challenges, such as contract based provisioning of management systems, monitoring and violation detection of dynamically agreed upon QoS parameters, problem determination and resolution, according to the terms and conditions specified in the contract. This paper proposes a management architecture for specifying, deploying and monitoring service contracts in a DeB environment, with a view to providing a basis for SLA management.