Outsourcing permeates the IT world and has had a profound impact on the work of IS professionals. Nearly all will, at some stage in their careers, work with outsourced services as customer or supplier. Elizabeth Sparrow's insights into the benefits and pitfalls of this complex area will help IS professionals tackle the challenges of outsourcing. Combining relevant background information with practical guidance this book covers the whole outsourcing process, from the initial decision to outsource through to managing the outsourced services on a day-to-day basis. Successful IT Outsourcing considers: - The objectives behind outsourcing - The selection of a service provider - The management and measurement of the performance of outsourced services - The role of the outsourcing contract - Why outsourcing sometimes fails and how to turn failure into success Features and Benefits: - Describes the origins of IT outsourcing, and recent developments - Examines the way in which an organization might determine whether to outsource and how it can choose a service provider - Discusses how to develop effective outsourcing relationships- Provides context and advice to assist IS professionals, whose work is being outsourced, as they consider their future careers and the possibility of transferring to a new employer

Digital forensics is the science of detecting evidence from digital media like a computer, smart phone, server, or network. It provides the forensic team with the most beneficial methods to solve confused digital-related cases. AI and blockchain can be applied to solve online predatory chat cases and photo forensics cases, provide network service evidence, custody of digital files in forensic medicine, and identify roots of data scavenging. The increased use of PCs and extensive use of internet access, has meant easy availability of hacking tools. Over the past two decades, improvements in the information technology landscape have made the collection, preservation, and analysis of digital evidence extremely important. The traditional tools for solving cybercrimes and preparing court cases are making investigations difficult. We can use AI and blockchain design frameworks to make the digital forensic process efficient and straightforward. AI features help determine the contents of a picture, detect spam email messages and recognize swatches of hard drives that could contain suspicious files. Blockchain-based lawful evidence management schemes can supervise the entire evidence flow of all of the court data. This book can provide a wide-ranging overview of how AI and blockchain can be used to solve problems in digital forensics using advanced tools and applications available on the market.

Back in 1994 at the game company CORE Design' in Derby, Lara Croft was born. Through eighteen months of pure hard work from the team, Tomb Raider was released in 1996 and became the success that we see today; taking part in the mid-nineties celebrations of Brit-Pop and Girl Power. This is the story of the team who were involved in creating the first two games, then leaving the series to a new team in 1998. Lara Croft brought class, comedy, and a James Bondian role to the game, dreamt up by Toby Gard and helped to become a pitch with Paul Douglas. The game was a gamble, but because everyone at the company believed in it, it led to huge success for everyone, except for Toby and Paul. The Making of Tomb Raider' goes into detail of how Lara and the games were born, alongside why Toby Gard and Paul Douglas left before the sequel was released. Throughout eleven chapters of countless interviews, this book will tell you who was responsible for creating the first two games; from its levels, its music, the many voices of Lara Croft, and much more. The team also reveals all about the star of the second game; Winston the Butler, and how he came to be by Joss Charmet. Over twenty people were interviewed for this story; from the pitch for what would be Tomb Raider, alongside the challenges along the way, up until the release of Tomb Raider 2 in 1997

This peer-reviewed book explores the technologies driving broadband internet connectivity in the fourth industrial revolution (Industry 4.0). It particularly focuses on potential solutions to introduce these technologies in emerging markets and rural areas, regions that typically form part of the digital divide and often have under-developed telecommunications infrastructures, a lack of skilled workers, and geographical restrictions that limit broadband connectivity. Research shows that ubiquitous internet access boosts socio-economic growth through innovations in science and technology, with the common goal of bringing positive change to the lives of individuals. Fifth-generation (5G) networks based on millimeter-wave (mm-wave) frequency information transfer have the potential to provide future-proof, affordable and sustainable broadband connectivity in areas where previous-generation mobile networks were unable to do so. This book discusses the principles of various technologies that enable electronic circuits to operate at mm-wave frequencies. It examines the importance of identifying, describing, and analyzing technology from a purely technological standpoint, but also acknowledges and investigates the challenges and limitations of introducing such technologies in emerging markets. Presenting recent research, the book spearheads participation in Industry 4.0 in these areas.

Accessible, refreshingly candid, but above all helpful, this pragmatic guide addresses a real need by dealing with the problems that face the new IT manager. By providing a number of practical recommendations and approaches including how to make the transition from technical professional to manager and dealing with people, to giving advice and guidance on organization structure, architecture and planning approaches, this book covers a whole raft of issues essential to managing an IT unit.

If you have chosen to move from the safe haven of technology to the unpredictable world of management, this book could make the difference between success and failure.

"The IT Manager's Survival Guide is well named. Aimed at the techie becoming an IT Manager it covers the many alligators of IT management - from legacy systems to managing vendors - in easy chunks with checklists. It also provides the new manager with help to get ahead of the game by including articles from experts on what is wrong with IT management and a set of short reviews of management theorists from Strassman to Mayo.

I recommend this book for those who would like to buck the trend - the average tenure of an IT Manager is about 900 days - and run an IT outfit appreciated by customers and staff."
Gill Ringland, Fellow of the British Computer Society and Member of the BCS Management Forum. Author of Scenario Planning: Managing for the Future.

Coding is awesome. So is being outside. With location-based iOS apps, you can combine the two for an enhanced outdoor experience. Use Swift to create your own apps that use GPS data, read sensor data from your iPhone, draw on maps, automate with geofences, and store augmented reality world maps. You'll have a great time without even noticing that you're learning. And even better, each of the projects is designed to be extended and eventually submitted to the App Store. Explore, share, and have fun. Location-based apps are everywhere. From mapping our jogging path to pointing us to the nearest collectible creature in a location-based game, these apps offer useful and interesting features and information related to where you are. Using real-world maps and places as the environment, they add an extra layer of adventure to exploring the outdoors. If you've ever wanted to make your own location-based apps and games, you can learn how with four simple, Swift-based projects that are easy to code and fun to use. Build four stunning apps that sense the iPhone's surroundings. Use Core Location and MapKit to draw GPS data on maps and share the results to social media. Use the sensor data from the iPhone and draw acceleration graphs using Core Graphics while on a playground swing. Build an app that measures the time you spend outside using geofences. Combine Core Location and ARKit to build an augmented reality scavenger hunt app that you can use and play with other people. Have great time building creative apps you cannot wait to try out.

Role of Blockchain Technology in IoT Applications, Volume 115 in the Advances in Computers series, reviews the latest information on this topic that promises many applications in human life. According to forecasts made by various market research/survey agencies, there will be around 50 Billion connected devices (IoT) by 2020. Updates in this new release include chapters on the Technical Aspects of Blockchain and IoT, Integrated Platforms for Blockchain-Enablement, Intersections Between IoT and Distributed Ledger, Blockchain and Artificial Intelligence: How and Why Combining These Two Groundbreaking Technologies, Blockchain Applications in Health Care and Opportunities and Advancements Due to New Information Technology Frameworks, and more.

Business managers, management consultants and researchers regularly question whether and how the contribution of IT to business performance can be measured. This book contributes to the art and science of the expost valuation of IT, by posing and answering key management questions, offering insights into the value of IT once it has been developed, implemented and used. Measuring the Value of Information Technology targets business managers, IT managers, business students and researchers and will enable its readers to systematically, effectively and consistently measure the value of Information Technology.

With the aim to sequentially determine optimal allocations across a set of assets, Online Portfolio Selection (OLPS) has significantly reshaped the financial investment landscape. Online Portfolio Selection: Principles and Algorithms supplies a comprehensive survey of existing OLPS principles and presents a collection of innovative strategies that leverage machine learning techniques for financial investment. The book presents four new algorithms based on machine learning techniques that were designed by the authors, as well as a new back-test system they developed for evaluating trading strategy effectiveness. The book uses simulations with real market data to illustrate the trading strategies in action and to provide readers with the confidence to deploy the strategies themselves. The book is presented in five sections that: Introduce OLPS and formulate OLPS as a sequential decision task Present key OLPS principles, including benchmarks, follow the winner, follow the loser, pattern matching, and meta-learning Detail four innovative OLPS algorithms based on cutting-edge machine learning techniques Provide a toolbox for evaluating the OLPS algorithms and present empirical studies comparing the proposed algorithms with the state of the art Investigate possible future directions Complete with a back-test system that uses historical data to evaluate the performance of trading strategies, as well as MATLAB® code for the back-test systems, this book is an ideal resource for graduate students in finance, computer science, and statistics. It is also suitable for researchers and engineers interested in computational investment. Readers are encouraged to visit the authors’ website for updates: http://olps.stevenhoi.org.

This book contains practical steps business users can take to implement data management in a number of ways, including data governance, data architecture, master data management, business intelligence, and others. It defines data strategy, and covers chapters that illustrate how to align a data strategy with the business strategy, a discussion on valuing data as an asset, the evolution of data management, and who should oversee a data strategy. This provides the user with a good understanding of what a data strategy is and its limits. Critical to a data strategy is the incorporation of one or more data management domains. Chapters on key data management domains—data governance, data architecture, master data management and analytics, offer the user a practical approach to data management execution within a data strategy. The intent is to enable the user to identify how execution on one or more data management domains can help solve business issues. This book is intended for business users who work with data, who need to manage one or more aspects of the organization’s data, and who want to foster an integrated approach for how enterprise data is managed. This book is also an excellent reference for students studying computer science and business management or simply for someone who has been tasked with starting or improving existing data management.

The financial services industry is changing under the stimulus of advances in information technology (IT), telecommunications, and the Internet. Technological innovations and growing customer demand and sophistication have led to the emergence of new electronic financial markets, organizational forms for financial services firms, products, and product delivery capabilities. This special issue highlights Information Systems (IS) research on management topics in the financial services that involve IT. The authors utilize a mix of research methodologies to examine a range of innovative applications of IT in the financial services industry.