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The purpose of this paper is to develop a research model examining users’ perceived needs-technology fit of mobile communication software through motivational needs and technological characteristics. The study investigated the effects of perceived needs-technology fit on user satisfaction and intention to continue using mobile communication software.

This study proposes a research model based on task-technology fit theory and uses and gratification theory, incorporating key determinants of users’ continuance intention toward mobile communication software. An online survey instrument was developed to collect data, and 403 questionnaires were used to test the relationships in the proposed model.

The causal model was validated using AMOS 21.0, and all nine study hypotheses were supported. The results indicated that users’ perceived needs-technology fit and satisfaction were crucial antecedents of their intention to continue using mobile communication software and that they mediated the influence of users’ needs as well as technological characteristics.

Mobile communication software practitioners should focus on enhancing users’ perceived needs-technology fit through motivational needs (utilitarian, hedonic, and social needs) and technological characteristics (mobile convenience, service compatibility, and user control) to further boost user satisfaction and intention to continue using mobile communication software services.

This study contributes to a theoretical understanding of factors explaining users’ continuance intention toward mobile communication software.

Findings of a new report from Knowledge Research, a London‐based market research company, indicate that with the exception of Italy Europeans are taking a cautious approach to CD‐ROM. Reasons for this caution are put down to a fear that CD‐ROM will erode revenues from existing alternative publications and an unwillingness to commit to the large up‐front investments needed Hardwaremanufacturers in particular have shown little interest in entering the market. This may be changing though, the report says, as some ‘significant announcements are expected this year’.

The purpose of this paper is to enable real estate managers to identify and evaluate appropriate information technology (IT) solutions from the array of options available.

The authors explain the main components of IT solutions and provide a systematic approach for evaluating, selecting, and maintaining a cost‐effective IT solution, empowering corporate real estate managers to make informed IT decisions.

Corporate real estate managers can use a systematic approach to evaluating hardware and software options to select a solution that better serves business needs.

Corporate real estate managers can use the models in this paper to change how they approach the selection of IT solutions for their business.

The paper fills a void by providing IT assistance specifically for corporate real estate managers using business rather than technical language.

This review reports on the current state and the potential of tools and systems designed to aid online searching, referred to here as online searching aids. Intermediary mechanisms are examined in terms of the two stage model, i.e. end‐user, intermediary, ‘raw database’, and different forms of user — system interaction are discussed. The evolution of the terminology of online searching aids is presented with special emphasis on the expert/non‐expert division. Terms defined include gateways, front‐end systems, intermediary systems and post‐processing. The alternative configurations that such systems can have and the approaches to the design of the user interface are discussed. The review then analyses the functions of online searching aids, i.e. logon procedures, access to hosts, help features, search formulation, query reformulation, database selection, uploading, downloading and post‐processing. Costs are then briefly examined. The review concludes by looking at future trends following recent developments in computer science and elsewhere. Distributed expert based information systems (debis), the standard generalised mark‐up language (SGML), the client‐server model, object‐orientation and parallel processing are expected to influence, if they have not done so already, the design and implementation of future online searching aids.

The importance of mobile services in our everyday life is growing while at the same time new interoperability issues arise due to hardware and software heterogeneity. Therefore, new architectural paradigms and models are needed to enhance software engineering methodologies with regard to platform independence and interoperability. This paper describes an UML pattern based approach for developing reconfigurable autonomous mobile services. Through the analysis of an mcommerce project, the relevance of our proposed architecture will be explained. Our focus lays on a generic reconfiguration mechanism based on profile matching from software modules. This profiling part will be further described and discussed. Finally, the applicability of our approach is investigated within a project about reconfigurable indoor navigation computers and a project about robot assisted sensor networks.

This paper addresses the concept of automated library systems of the 1980s as a marriage of traditional bibliographic transaction processing applications and those now emerging under the rubric of the advanced office system. This is the concept of CESS—the Comprehensive Electronic Service System for the library or information center. The basis of CESS will be a distributed data processing system eventually linking the local library, via computer to computer communication, to institutional parent, regional and national level systems and their associated services. Functional application distribution for this system is discussed with Computer Consoles, Inc., Office Power and Prime Computer, Inc., Prime Office Automation System (POAS) used to show the office automation capabilities and their integration aspects with online bibliographic systems for the library. Present and near term solutions to creating CESS concept systems are presented.

At present the energy generation and distribution landscape is changing rapidly. The energy grid is becoming increasingly smart, relying on an information network for the purposes of monitoring and optimization. However, because of the particularly stringent regulatory and technical constraints posed by smart grids, it is not possible to use ordinary communication protocols. The purpose of this paper is to revisit such constraints, reviewing the various options available today to realize smart‐metering networks.

After describing the regulatory, technological and stakeholders' constraints, the authors provide a taxonomy of network technologies, discussing their suitability and weaknesses in the context of smart‐metering systems. The authors also give a snapshot of the current standardization panorama, identifying key differences among various geographical regions.

It is found that the field of smart‐metering networks still consists of a fragmented set of standards and solutions, leaving open a number of issues relating to the design and deployment of suitable systems.

This paper addresses the need to better understand state‐of‐the‐art and open issues in the fast‐evolving area of smart energy grids, with particular attention to the challenges faced by communication engineers.

Software piracy is an ongoing problem for software producers. At the same time, mobile devices such as personal digital assistants and smart phones are increasing in popularity. This paper seeks to examine the supply of pirate software for mobile devices, against a backdrop of conventional desktop piracy theory.

Using a novel data set of pirate software releases, the paper reviews 18,000 entries from a pirate software database to examine the type and origin of this software.

The paper finds that more popular platforms are not necessarily subject to greater levels of software piracy. For mobile devices, productivity software was more popular than game software. Many piracy groups were involved, but only four groups were responsible for over half of all releases. Some popular devices, such as the Blackberry and Apple iPhone, showed little to no piracy levels.

As with empirical research into any criminal or deviant behaviour, there may be intention to deceive. The findings regarding device popularity and availability of pirate software have implications for demand‐side research.

The findings provide insights for business managers and information security professionals in the telecommunications and mobile applications industries.

Prior research work has focused on software for desktop computers. This study contributes by being some of the first published work on piracy for mobile devices. The work is also original in that most prior research has focused on the demand for pirate software. This paper provides insight into the supply of this software.

Service supplier selection is a multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) problem assuming a strategic role for the competitiveness of high-tech manufacturing companies. Nevertheless, especially for service quality evaluation, there is little empirical evidence of the practical usefulness of MCDM methodologies. Aiming to cover this gap between theoretical approaches and empirical applications, the purpose of this paper is to propose a fuzzy extended analytic hierarchy process (FEAHP) approach for service supplier evaluation.

A hybrid approach which combines some of the strengths of the analytic hierarchy process (AHP) and of the fuzzy set theory is presented, as organized into five steps. A case study is used to evaluate the applicability in a real company context.

The usability of the approach is demonstrated in an aerospace company for solving the supplier selection problem of a business software whose applications are still in infancy: a Test Data Management System (TDMS). The illustrative application contains both “general” criteria to be used for other service supplier selection contexts as well as service-specific criteria related to software selection.

Even if the application regards the selection of a software supplier, the methodology can be generically extended to other services’ selection in complex manufacturing industries through the personalization of some criteria.

Implications can be derived both for business managers involved into the decision-making process and for suppliers identifying the most promising features of software quality.

The originality consists in the combination into a hybrid approach of the strong points of the AHP with the fuzzy set; the inclusion of multiple perspectives of decision criteria for service supplier selection, basically the “software product” and “supplier” ones; a real empirical application to test and demonstrate the efficacy and the practical utility of the proposed approach.

Software testing is usually a very costly and time‐consuming phase in software development. As most software systems are modular, it is of great importance for the management to allocate the limited testing‐time among the software modules in an optimal way so that the highest quality and reliability of the complete system can be achieved. In this paper, the problem of optimal testing‐time allocation for modular software systems is studied. A generic formulation of the problem is presented based on nonhomogeneous Poisson process models. The aim is to maximize the operational reliability of the software system. Numerical examples are presented to illustrate the optimisation algorithm and the solution. Furthermore, as software reliability growth models consist of a number of parameters, an example of a sensitivity analysis is also shown. Such a sensitivity study is useful as important model parameters can be identified given more attention.