In this networked society, where social media becomes a natural meeting place, the need for physical encounters is greater than ever. In the business world, business events are a way for people to satisfy this need while they at the same time get the opportunity to exchange skills, information and experiences with other colleagues, thus expanding their and their company’s competencies. This report looks at how business events are distributed today and investigates the interest for a new channel where business events are collected which is of mutual value for business event organizers and attendees. In order to understand the needs of event organizers and attendees a survey has been conducted consisting of a questionnaire, interviews and a focus group, which helped pinpoint three relevant themes: discover, organize and connect. The themes were based on wishes left by the respondents, declaring that finding information about events were a difficult and time consuming procedure. They wanted an easier way to find interesting events and sorting out those that were of relevance to their jobs and surrounding areas. Similarly the organizers had noticed an increasingly competitive market making it difficult to reach customers. It was also observed by the organizers that people go to events to network, leading to the conclusion that one element of the service should be about connecting with colleagues, possible business partners and other interesting people. As a result, a design proposal was presented in the form of a mockup of a mobile application interface where the themes were present as sections of a quick access menu. To conclude, the report discusses suggestions on how to proceed with the design proposal and makes recommendations on future research on the development of an app for business events. / I ett samhälle som präglas av nätverkande och där sociala medier blivit en naturlig mötesplats, är behovet av fysiska möten större än någonsin. Företagsevent är ett sätt att fylla det behovet, samtidigt som man får möjlighet att utbyta kunskaper, information och erfarenheter med andra kollegor för att utveckla sin kompetens och därmed bli en större tillgång till företaget. Denna rapport tittar på hur företagsevent distribueras idag och undersöker intresset för en ny digital kanal som samlar aktuella företagsevent och som är av gemensamma intressen för företagare och kunder. För att förstå organisatörernas och användarnas behov har en undersökning genomförts bestående av en enkät, intervjuer och en fokusgrupp. Resultatet av undersökningen visar på tre relevanta teman, upptäck (discover), organisera (organize) och nätverka (connect), som skulle fungera som stöttepelare för en ny kanal. Dessa teman har framkommit i och med att de tillfrågade ansåg att det var svårt och tidskrävande att leta upp information om nya företagsevent. De ville ha ett enklare sätt att upptäcka intressanta event och möjligheten att sortera ut de event som var relevanta i relation till yrkesområden och intressen. Samtidigt har eventarrangörerna märkt av en allt tuffare konkurrens på marknaden som gör det svårt att nå kunder. Observationen att nätverkande är en stor faktor när det kommer till varför man deltar i företagsevent ledde till slutsatsen att en del av tjänsten ska tillåta kontaktutbyte med kollegor och andra intressanta personer. Slutligen presenteras ett konceptuellt designförslag i form av en mockup av en mobilapplikation där nämnda teman implementeras i varsina delar i en snabbåtkomstsmeny. Avslutningsvis diskuteras förslag på hur man kan gå vidare med designförslaget samt rekommendationer om fortsatt utveckling av en tjänst för företagsevent.

A indústria de TVa cabo está num caminho convergente com o setor de telecomunicações por força dos avanços tecnológicos relacionados à informática. As redes das operadoras de cabo têm a possibilidade de se transformarem num elemento central na evolução da sociedade da informação. Essa dissertação investiga a estrutura competitiva atual da indústria de TV a cabo brasileira. Para isso, lança mão dos conceitos de Michael E. Porter (1980). Além disso, são descritos possíveis desdobramentos na evolução da estrutura do setor, na visão de especialistas da indústria. / The Cable Industry and the Telecommunications Industry are converging due to technological innovation mainly related to computer sciences. Cable networks have the potential to become a central element on the information society evolution. This paper investigates the Brazilian cable industry's current competitive structure. To do so, Michael E. Porter (1980) concepts are used. This paper also describes possible outcomes for structural evolution of the sector.

We consider cache replacement algorithms at a shared cache in a multicore system which receives an arbitrary interleaving of requests from processes that have full knowledge about their individual request sequences. We establish tight bounds on the competitive ratio of deterministic and randomized cache replacement strategies when processes share memory blocks. Our main result for this case is a deterministic algorithm called GLOBAL-MAXIMA which is optimum up to a constant factor when processes share memory blocks. Our framework is a generalization of the application controlled caching framework in which processes access disjoint sets of memory blocks. We also present a deterministic algorithm called RR-PROC-MARK which exactly matches the lower bound on the competitive ratio of deterministic cache replacement algorithms when processes access disjoint sets of memory blocks. We extend our results to multiple levels of caches and prove that an exclusive cache is better than both inclusive and non-inclusive caches; this validates the experimental findings in the literature. Our results could be applied to shared caches in multicore systems in which processes work together on multithreaded computations like Gaussian elimination paradigm, fast Fourier transform, matrix multiplication, etc. In these computations, processes have full knowledge about their individual request sequences and can share memory blocks. / text

University, Diss., 2004--Saarbrücken.

A indústria de TVa cabo está num caminho convergente com o setor de telecomunicações por força dos avanços tecnológicos relacionados à informática. As redes das operadoras de cabo têm a possibilidade de se transformarem num elemento central na evolução da sociedade da informação. Essa dissertação investiga a estrutura competitiva atual da indústria de TV a cabo brasileira. Para isso, lança mão dos conceitos de Michael E. Porter (1980). Além disso, são descritos possíveis desdobramentos na evolução da estrutura do setor, na visão de especialistas da indústria. / The Cable Industry and the Telecommunications Industry are converging due to technological innovation mainly related to computer sciences. Cable networks have the potential to become a central element on the information society evolution. This paper investigates the Brazilian cable industry's current competitive structure. To do so, Michael E. Porter (1980) concepts are used. This paper also describes possible outcomes for structural evolution of the sector.

A indústria de TVa cabo está num caminho convergente com o setor de telecomunicações por força dos avanços tecnológicos relacionados à informática. As redes das operadoras de cabo têm a possibilidade de se transformarem num elemento central na evolução da sociedade da informação. Essa dissertação investiga a estrutura competitiva atual da indústria de TV a cabo brasileira. Para isso, lança mão dos conceitos de Michael E. Porter (1980). Além disso, são descritos possíveis desdobramentos na evolução da estrutura do setor, na visão de especialistas da indústria. / The Cable Industry and the Telecommunications Industry are converging due to technological innovation mainly related to computer sciences. Cable networks have the potential to become a central element on the information society evolution. This paper investigates the Brazilian cable industry's current competitive structure. To do so, Michael E. Porter (1980) concepts are used. This paper also describes possible outcomes for structural evolution of the sector.

This master´s thesis describes the suggestion of appropriate marketing strategy for an advertising agency, which intends to expand its range of services. The first part deals with theoretical bases which are used in the second part in practice. In the practical part is first analyzed the current state of advertising agencies and are subsequently suggested suitable marketing strategy for the introduction of new services.

The thesis analyzes the competitive environment of CK Alexandria. The aim is to create a comprehensive framework for systematic analysis of competitive environment. The thesis uses principles of Competitive Intelligence reflecting the specifics of travel agent industry. The first part introduces travel agents in general. It is followed by a description of competitive environment of travel agents. The following capture introduces the theoretical information about Competitive Intelligence. The practical section outlines the possible usege of CI in the particular company.

Maximizing hotel's revenue is a hard and complicated task. A lot of aspects have to be taken into consideration during this procedure. One major variable is the competitors. Identifying hotel's competitors and using their behavior could be a crucial advantage for maximizing hotel's revenue. For this reason, in this thesis the effect of competitors' pricing in the demand forecasting is being studied. Five hotels with approximately 13 months of historical data are available. During the study two GLM models were tested, Poisson and Negative Binomial regression. As a baseline, the models were modeled only with time related features. Competitors' pricing features were added to the baseline models in order to test the effect of the competition. The feature extraction procedure was implemented by the author of the thesis. A LASSO regression was used for feature selection. The effect of competition is tested in terms of the performance of the models and their forecasting behavior. Moreover, it is of great interest to test, whether any of the features or class of features proposed in this study dominates among others. In order for the goals of the project to be accomplished, the evaluation procedure was split in two parts. In the first one, all models were trained into approximately 12 months of historical data. The goodness of fit was tested by a likelihood ratio test and the forecasting behavior for the remaining one month was commented. For the second part of evaluation, a cross validation forecasting error was computed for two different forecasting windows (7 days and 30 days). The evaluation metrics were RMSE, sMAPE and CMAE. The results showed that adding competitors' features improved the goodness of fit of the models. The cross validation forecasting error results differ among hotels. For some of them, adding competitors' features led to an important decrease of the error metrics. For some others, the decrease was not so high, but it still occurred. On average of all hotels, the three metrics were decreased for both 7 and 30 days of forecasting window. For the forecasting behavior, the models with competitors' features were able to capture peaks in specific days, something that the models without competitors could not. The results also showed, that none of the features or group of features proposed in this thesis dominates among others. Consequently, adding competitors' features in the models appeared to have a positive effect to the demand forecasting by improving the performance of the models.

Avec les préoccupations environnementales croissantes liées aux émissions de carbone et la chute rapide des prix des batteries, la part de marché des véhicules électriques (EV) augmente rapidement. Le nombre croissant de EV ainsi que les progrès sans précédent dans la capacité de la batterie et de la technologie entraîne une augmentation drastique de la demande totale d'énergie destinée aux véhicules électriques. Cette forte demande de charge rend complexe le problème de planification de la charge. Même en prenant avantage de la propriété reportable des demandes de charge et d'une planification adéquate, la demande globale pourrait dépasser le taux de charge tolérable des stations, étant donné les contraintes physiques des dispositifs de charge et des transformateurs. Le principal défi est la nécessité de concevoir des solutions en ligne puisque, dans la pratique, l'ordonnanceur ne dispose d'aucune information sur les arrivées futures d'EV. Cette thèse étudie le problème d'ordonnancement des EV en ligne et fournit trois contributions principales. Premièrement, nous démontrons que le problème classique de la programmation en ligne des tâches sensibles aux échéances avec des valeurs partielles est similaire au problème d'ordonnancement EV et étudions l'extension de la programmation des charges EV en prenant en compte de la limite de traitement des travaux. Le problème réside dans la catégorie des problèmes d'ordonnancement en ligne couplés dans le temps sans disponibilité d'informations futures. Le premier algorithme proposé est déterministe, tandis que le second est randomisé et bénéficie d'une complexité de calcul plus faible. Deuxièmement, nous formulons un problème de maximisation du bien-être social pour la planification de la charge des EV avec une contrainte de capacité de charge. Nous avons conçu des algorithmes d'ordonnancement de charge qui non seulement fonctionnent dans un scénario en ligne, mais aussi qui répondent aux deux principaux défis suivants : (i) fournir un engagement à l'arrivée ; (ii) garantir la résistance aux stratégies (de groupe). Des simulations approfondies utilisant des traces réelles démontrent l'efficacité de nos algorithmes d'ordonnancement en ligne par rapport à la solution hors-ligne optimale non-engagée. La troisième contribution concerne la planification en ligne des véhicules électriques dans un réseau de recharge adaptatif (ACN) avec des contraintes de pics locaux et globaux. Nous avons conçu un algorithme d'ordonnancement primal-dual de faible complexité qui atteint un rapport d'approximation borné. Des résultats expérimentaux détaillés basés sur des traces montrent que les performances des algorithmes en ligne proposés sont proches de l'optimum hors ligne et surpassent les solutions existantes / With the increased environmental concerns related to carbon emission, and rapid drop in battery prices (e.g., 35% drop in 2017), the market share of Electric Vehicles (EVs) is rapidly growing. The growing number of EVs along with the unprecedented advances in battery capacity and technology results in drastic increase in the total energy demand of EVs. This large charging demand makes the EV charging scheduling problem challenging. The critical challenge is the need for online solution design since in practical scenario the scheduler has no information of future arrivals of EVs in a time-coupled underlying problem. This thesis studies online EV scheduling problem and provides three main contributions. First, we demonstrate that the classical problem of online scheduling of deadlinesensitive jobs with partial values is similar to the EV scheduling problem and study the extension to EV charging scheduling by taking into account the processing rate limit of jobs as an additional constraint to the original problem. The problem lies in the category of time-coupled online scheduling problems without availability of future information. Using competitive ratio, as a well-established performance metric, two online algorithms, both of which are shown to be (2 − 1/U)-competitive are proposed, where U is the maximum scarcity level, a parameter that indicates demand-to-supply ratio. Second, we formulate a social welfare maximization problem for EV charging scheduling with charging capacity constraint. We devise charging scheduling algorithms that not only work in online scenario, but also they address the following two key challenges: (i) to provide on-arrival commitment; respecting the capacity constraint may hinder fulfilling charging requirement of deadline-constrained EVs entirely. Therefore, committing a guaranteed charging amount upon arrival of each EV is highly required; (ii) to guarantee (group)-strategy-proofness as a salient feature to promote EVs to reveal their true type and do not collude with other EVs. Third, we tackle online scheduling of EVs in an adaptive charging network (ACN) with local and global peak constraints. Two alternatives in resource-limited scenarios are to maximize the social welfare by partially charging the EVs (fractional model) or selecting a subset of EVs and fully charge them (integral model). For the fractional model, both offline and online algorithms are devised. We prove that the offline algorithm is optimal. We prove the online algorithm achieves a competitive ratio of 2. The integral model, however, is more challenging since the underlying problem is NP-hard due to 0/1 selection criteria of EVs. Hence, efficient solution design is challenging even in offline setting. We devise a low-complexity primal-dual scheduling algorithm that achieves a bounded approximation ratio. Built upon the offline approximate algorithm, we propose an online algorithm and analyze its competitive ratio in special cases