Journal of Information Technology Management
Volume:9 Issue: 4, 2017

There is quite huge annual energy consumption in Iran in household, commercial, and public sectors. In addition, the index of population aging manifests a great increase in recent years. Concurrent to all these, smart houses which are equipped with Internet of Things (IoT) can help us maintain sustainable developments with functionalities such as improvements in energy consumption and health, to name but a few. Accordingly, in this thesis, we aimed to identify the usage and functions of IoT in smart houses. This research is an applied research in nature and it would be classified as qualitative regarding data collection. In order to identify the usages of IoT in smart houses with the help of meta-synthesis approach, we have examined 371 researches among which only 85 have been selected for the final analysis. 122 factors have been extracted based on these 85 researches which have been combined into 7 main usages of “electricity consumption management”, “Heating, ventilation and air conditioning System”, “water consumption control”, “security empowerment for the buildings and the neighborhood”, “health monitoring”, “crisis management”, and home appliance automation.

A common mistake in the management of information technology projects is paying attention only to the technical issues and neglecting other areas of the project management. A critical area in information technology projects is the stakeholder management, which has been the focal point of many recent researches in the project management field. Thus, a decision support system (DSS) has been developed in this paper, consisting of a 10-stage operational process that leads to an executive plan for responding to the stakeholders’ expectations. The proposed DSS benefits from an optimization model that considers not only cost and time constraints, but also the possibility of partly fulfilling the stakeholders’ needs and expectations. The most important innovations in the development of this DSS are: considering the different phases of the project (planning, implementation and closing); and also, considering the personality types of contact persons in each stakeholder group. The proposed system has been implanted in a national IT project and the results have been presented in three categories, i.e. criteria and stakeholders, cost and time, and the results of the proposed model.

Cloud computing is a new technology that considerably helps Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) to develop and create competitive advantage with inherent characteristics such as flexibility, scalability, accessibility, reliability, fault tolerant and economic efficiency. Due to the numerous advantages of cloud computing, and in order to take advantage of cloud computing infrastructure, services of universities and HEIs need to migrate to the cloud. However, this transition involves many challenges, one of which is lack or shortage of appropriate architecture for migration to the technology. Using a reliable architecture for migration ensures managers to mitigate risks in the cloud computing technology. Therefore, organizations always search for suitable cloud computing architecture. In previous studies, these important features have received less attention and have not been achieved in a comprehensive way. The aim of this study is to use a meta-synthesis method for the first time to analyze the previously published studies and to suggest appropriate hybrid cloud migration architecture (IUHEC). We reviewed many papers from relevant journals and conference proceedings. The concepts extracted from these papers are classified to related categories and sub-categories. Then, we developed our proposed hybrid architecture based on these concepts and categories. The proposed architecture was validated by a panel of experts and Lawshe’s model was used to determine the content validity. Due to its innovative yet user-friendly nature, comprehensiveness, and high security, this architecture can help HEIs have an effective migration to cloud computing environment.

With regard to the needs of Iran for expansion of foreign markets, in this research, developing a model concerning fundamentals and prerequisites for developing international markets in ICT industry was sought. For this purpose, related literature was reviews and two primary models for fundamentals and prerequisites have been designed. Then, for customization of the model according to Iranian market, experts opinions were collected through interviews and Delphi method. The nature of this research is developmental and applicable and the research method is a combination of qualitative and quantitative methods. For data gathering, at first we interviewed 10 knowledgeable experts. Then, 60 factors were extracted from interviews through theme analysis. The extracted factors were added to the already 45 factors that were identified from the literature review and totally 105 factors were sent to 15 experts to examine the importance and adaptability of those factors in Iran market. After a three-step Delphi method evaluation, 44 factors became finalized. Then a survey was done on 110 experts that work in ICT industry. The result of the exploratory factor analysis has shown that the factors were divided into 4 dimensions, namely, governmental, organizational, governmental prerequisite, abd organizational prerequisite.

Given the increasing requirements of communication and the need for advanced network-based technologies, cloud computing has been suggested as a perfect strategy to achieve these objectives. Yet, despite the development of computing applications and the increased number of alternatives, it is quite a difficult task to select the exact software platform for the implementation of cloud computing arrangements. In this line, the present paper aimed to develop a scientific framework as how to select the proper software for successful cloud computing implantation at the infrastructure level. First through a review on the related literature and using experts’ opinions, the software selection criteria were extracted. Based on the framework proposed here, the interval-valued fuzzy ARAS method was then employed for weighting and prioritizing specified alternatives. This model was applied by the Faculty of New Sciences and Technologies of Tehran University in order to select proper software platforms from among five alternatives. The results revealed that the OpenStack cloud operating system has been selected as the best alternative, most probably because this platform demonstrates significant achievement for its merits such as high level of performance, reliability and security, stability, and usability.

The survival guide to competitiveness for organizations is to become closer to the customers and deliver value-added products and services in the shortest time. This, in turn, requires integration of the business processes of the enterprise, which is the stronghold of Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP). On the other hand, most ERP projects are believed to be doomed to failures. In this research, the factors leading to failure of ERP projects implementation in Iranian enterprises were identified and surveyed. Subsequently, the factors have been classified and ranked consulting the experts and using fuzzy flowsort inference system. For this purpose, the failure factors were extracted reviewing the previous related researches. After that, the experts merged the synonymous and homogeneous factors. The remaining 58 factors were classified in seven categories including: organizational, project management, human resources, managerial, vendors and consultants, processes-related, and technical factors. The factors were prioritized using the experts’ opinions and were ranked utilizing fuzzy flowsort inference system. Finally, ten criteria were determined as the most critical failure factors of ERP projects implementation in Iranian enterprises.

In order to protect cyberspace against cyber-attacks we need cyber situation awareness framework for the implementation of our cyber maneuvers. This article allows execution cyber maneuvers with dynamic cyber battlefield simulator. Cyber battlefield contains essential information for the detection of cyber events, therefore, it can be considered most important and complicated factor in the high-level fusion. Cyber battlefield by gather detail data of cyberspace elements, including knowledge repository of vulnerability, tangible and intangible elements of cyberspace and the relationships between them, can provide and execute cyber maneuvers, penetration testing, cyber-attacks injection, attack tracking, visualization, cyber-attacks impact assessment and risk assessment. The dynamic maker Engine in simulator is designed to update the knowledge base of vulnerabilities, change the topology elements, and change the access list, services, hosts and users. Evaluation of simulator do with qualitative method of research and with create a focus group.

In the technology-based industries, such as pharmaceutical industry, the success of the companies depends on their ability to provide new and continuous innovations to the market. The purpose of this study is to investigate the effect of information technology capabilities on the performance of organizations in the pharmaceutical industry in Iran. The research method in this study is survey type and a random sampling method has been used. According to the statistics provided by the Ministry of Health of Iran, there are over 170 active pharmaceutical and chemical companies (chemical and plant) in the country. The population of the study includes all the internal, production, human resources, marketing and sales managers in these 170 companies. They were estimated to be around 746, from which 254 were selected as the sample. The main findings of this research are: 1- The technological capabilities are proved effective on three supply chain approaches of purity, resilience, and agility. 2- Those three supply chain approaches (purity, resilience, and agility) have a positive effect on organizational performance.

Security problems and barriers are one of the most fundamental issues in information systems. Security has long been regarded as an integral part of IT infrastructure. In this regard, the present research aimed to identify the effective components of information security management in Iran's Offshore Oil Company Information Technology. The population of this research includes Iran's Offshore Oil Company IT managers and experts. The research is considered as mixed method in nature. In the qualitative section, the effectiveness components were identified using semi-structured interviews. Then these identified components were developed in the form of a secondary questionnaire and proposed to the population so the necessary data were collected. Data analysis was performed using SPSS20 and Lisrel software. The results of the research showed the components related to technical human, managerial, leadership, financial and economic issues, components related to management and leadership issues affecting information security management of information technology department of Iran's offshore oil company.

Recommender systems are widely used, in social networks and online stores, to overcome the problems caused by the large amount of information. Most of these systems use a collaborative filtering method to generate recommendations to the users. But, as in this method users’ feedback is considered for recommendations, it can be significantly erroneous by the malicious people. In other words, there may be some users who open fake profiles and vote one-sided or biased in the system that may cause disturbance in providing proper recommendations to other users. This kind of damage is said to be shiling attacks. If the attackers succeed, the user's trust in the recommender systems will reduce. In recent years, efficient attack detection algorithms have been proposed, but each has its own limitations. In this paper, we use profile-based and item-based algorithms to provide a new mechanism to significantly reduce the detection error for shilling attacks.