M.Com. (Business Management) / In the current economy, leveraging information technology (IT) is of vital importance to gain a sustainable competitive advantage. To accomplish this, companies must ensure the alignment of IT with business strategy. The fundamental goal of alignment should be for IT capabilities to support, enable, and, where appropriate, lead business strategy. Such alignment will maximize the effective use and value of IT in a strategic context. The alignment of IT and business strategy is not easily achieved and has always presented IT and business executives with numerous problems. One of many challenges facing small businesses is that IT strategy appears to take a parallel course to business strategy, maintaining a common direction with business strategy but at a distance. The objective of this research is to identify the impact of this separation of strategy, and understand how to enable enhanced alignment of IT and business strategy. The research scope focuses on the alignment of IT and business strategy in small and medium enterprises (SMEs). The Strategic Alignment Model will be used to analyse IT and business strategy alignment. The value that IT contributes to the organisation will be analysed in terms of three dimensions: systems, users and the wider business. The research will seek to establish whether a relationship exists between strategic alignment and the value of IT to the organisation. Data has been collected through structured interviews conducted with management executives from various SMEs. A concise introduction with each participant ensured a common understanding of key terms and concepts. Questionnaires were also mailed to willing participants where personal interviews were not possible. The findings of this study are expected to assist the alignment of IT and business strategy in SMEs in South Africa resulting in greater realisation of IT value and benefits

This study concerns the investigation of management issues within information technology outsourcing contracts. The information technology outsourcing life cycle is used as the flow structure for the investigation. The associated user expectations that occur in each of the phases of the information technology outsourcing life cycle are identified. Following the identification of the management and user expectation issues in each phase of the outsource life cycle, the “Coetzee solution framework” is introduced to ensure that the identified management problems are addressed in a structured approach. The solution framework is described in the context of each phase of the information technology outsourcing life cycle. As business process outsourcing is emerging as a long term business solution, the trends in business process outsourcing with the related factors that are contributing to the growth of business process outsourcing are investigated. The inhibitors that slow down the progress of acceptance for business process outsourcing are also investigated. The interdependence of information technology outsourcing and business process outsourcing is also shortly reviewed. / Prof. N. Lessing

M.Sc. (Informatics) / Please refer to full text to view abstract

<p> Recently, Cloud has become quite attractive due to its elasticity, availability, and scalability. However, the technologies such as virtualization build up Cloud appear like a double-edged sword because of the expansion on attacking surfaces to entire hardware-software stack. Moreover, homogeneous computing in Cloud severely limits the computational power it could potentially provide. As a result, it is strongly desired to have new and comprehensive solutions to take in all benefits from Cloud and suppress backsides. This thesis proposes three new solutions to address security, computation and data issues in Cloud. Firstly, a GPU MapReduce framework specifically aims at improving performance and reducing energy consumption to data parallel problems in Cloud. In addition, the P-CP-ABE scheme overcomes not only the difficulties of data security, access control, and key management issues in Cloud, but the performance weakness of original CP-ABE is enhanced dramatically as well. Finally, the multi tenancy technology on top of the insecure network requires a strong network authentication protocol suite to assure authenticity and nonrepudiation in the Cloud.</p><p>

The growth of Information technology is characterised by the chronic failure rate of IT enabled projects. IT governance is recognised as the mechanism for overcoming the challenges which hinder Information Technology’s ability to fulfil its potential. An understanding the state of IT governance provides insight into whether the current organisational IT environment is conducive toward allowing South African firms to sustain their operations and support their future strategies. The approach used for obtaining the required information for the research consisted of 2 concurrent data gathering methods, semi-structured interviews and an on-line survey. Both methods utilised a survey to assess IT governance in South Africa. A combined total of 48 surveys were completed consisting of 32 on-line surveys and 16 semi-structured interviews. The combined results of the completed surveys provided the basis for the research findings. The researched assessed the State of IT governance in South Africa as less than optimal based on specific issues relating to three key IT governance success criteria namely IT value measurement, executive management involvement in IT governance, and IT governance alignment with the business. Fortunately South African organisations have acknowledged the shortcomings and have taken active steps in adopting various international best practices, standards, frameworks, and tools towards addressing these challenges. / Dissertation (MBA)--University of Pretoria, 2010. / Gordon Institute of Business Science (GIBS) / unrestricted

The last decade has provided some valuations of internet companies that defy traditional financial models. The stock market crash of 2001 corrected and cleaned out much of the misallocated capital. However, internet Companies in both America and South Africa still trade and sell at significant premiums versus their industrial counterparts. There are also clear and distinct differences in growth patterns that accompany valuations of successful companies. It appears that revenue growth timelines can be successfully compressed when compared hose of traditional industrial companies. Google, Amazon, Yahoo and eBay are good examples of this phenomenon, growing at rapidly, and turning a profit in equally short measure. This paper examines these internet premiums in South Africa, what the legitimate accelerated revenue premiums are and what can be discarded as bubble-type hype. / Dissertation (MBA)--University of Pretoria, 2010. / Gordon Institute of Business Science (GIBS) / unrestricted

This research investigates whether The Unified Theory of Acceptance and Technology (UTAUT) can be successfully applied to the adoption of an early stage technology. Specifically, the study examines the models suitably toward explaining consumer acceptance of the online desktop or webOS. A secondary objective was to assess the likelihood that consumers will adopt the online desktop. The study found that the UTAUT model accounted for 57 percent of the variance in consumer intention to use an online desktop. The performance expectations of consumers accounted for a significant proportion of this variance. In regards to the secondary objective, the study concluded that the online desktop was of moderate use to consumers. An online desktop was found to be useful to consumers in that it provides them with enhanced mobility and flexibility. / Dissertation (MBA)--University of Pretoria, 2010. / Gordon Institute of Business Science (GIBS) / unrestricted

<p> Clinical study data is usually collected without knowing what kind of data is going to be collected in advance. In addition, all of the possible data points that can apply to a patient in any given clinical study is almost always a superset of the data points that are actually recorded for a given patient. As a result of this, clinical data resembles a set of sparse data with an evolving data schema. To help researchers at the Moffitt Cancer Center better manage clinical data, a tool was developed called GURU that uses the Entity Attribute Value model to handle sparse data and allow users to manage a database entity&rsquo;s attributes without any changes to the database table definition. The Entity Attribute Value model&rsquo;s read performance gets faster as the data gets sparser but it was observed to perform many times worse than a wide table if the attribute count is not sufficiently large. Ultimately, the design trades read performance for flexibility in the data schema.</p><p>

With the growth in the use of technology in sports, there has been an improvement in sporting performances. Some may argue that the two go hand in hand, while others will write it off as coincidence. Nevertheless the use of technology in sport is seen on a daily basis. Cricket uses Hotspot, tennis uses Hawk-Eye and rugby uses slow motion video replays. In these sports codes, technology is already an aid to umpires. Little is known, however, about the technologies used to assist coaches in sports codes such as netball. This study investigated the factors impacting the introduction of information technology in the coaching of netball. The study commenced with using the term technology in the broader sense of the word to gain an understanding from netball coaches as to how technology could be incorporated into the sport. It was later narrowed down more specifically to computer technologies. The investigation was done at the Spar National Netball Championships in 2012, where coaches were surveyed about the preparation for the tournament of the provincial teams. The surveys included questions to coaches regarding the technologies used in preparation for a national tournament. The results obtained from the coaches were used to identify the current technologies used. Interviews were conducted after the analysis of the initial results to probe into the potential use of social media as a tool to assist coaches. Based on the results of the study, a number of factors that impact on the introduction of technology in the coaching of netball were identified. The factors and basic guidelines were validated through expert focus groups. Based on the findings from the experts, the factors and guidelines were refined. It is envisaged that the findings from this research can be used to assist netball coaches in deciding how to introduce the use of information technology into the sport.

Despite the demand for ICT skills, businesses are experiencing an ICT skills shortage. Constantly changing ICT technologies require business leaders to find qualified ICT professionals to implement new business strategies and business processes. The Information and Communications Technology (ICT) sector is experiencing a continued skills shortage and various initiatives have been launched to address the problem. Businesses continually struggle to find qualified and suitably skilled ICT personnel. As a result businesses have had to outsource their ICT requirements off-shore to obtain the required ICT skills and maintain their competitive advantage. In a country desperate for job creation, entrepreneurial inclination and start up of new businesses may play a pivotal role in the economic development and well being of individuals able to capitalise on the availability of ICT opportunities. Entrepreneurship is a critical factor in promoting innovation, creating employment opportunities and generating social and economic wealth in a country's economy. Sectors such as Information and Communication Technologies can be seen as archetypal entrepreneurial industries and can consequently play a key role in economic development. In the research that follows the author identifies an ICT skills shortage in South Africa. This is followed by an exploratory study that investigates the influence of psychological traits and socio-cultural variables on the entrepreneurial intent of selected ICT SMME’s in the Nelson Mandela Metropolitan Area. The findings revealed that both psychological traits together with socio-cultural variables influence an individual’s intention to start up a business. The predominant psychological trait discovered during the research was perseverance. Family environmental issues were the dominant socio-cultural variable influencing entrepreneurial intention amongst the case study subjects.