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Technologies for the Electronic Distribution of Information Services - A Value Proposition Analysis

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Abstract

Since the original design and deployment of the Internet architecture, the economical and technological requirements regarding the distribution quality of web-based information services have changed drastically. Business models have evolved that particularly address quality and cost aspects of information service distribution, e.g. content delivery networks and peer-to-peer distribution. In addition, network operators apply differentiated routing technologies in dedicated infrastructures to guarantee a superior quality of service (QoS). This article compares the value propositions of technologies for information service distribution. 103 information services were analyzed by means of discriminant analyses in order to identify the main aspects influencing delivery quality and costs. The results indicate that the value propositions differ with regard to the type of services they support rather than with regard to direct QoS criteria, such as latency and packet loss. The insights derived from this work support information service vendors in their choice of a distribution provider.

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Notes

  1. Refer to Table 8 in the Appendix for a summary of the directives and conformance justifications.

  2. For an overview of the judges’ qualifications, readers are referred to Table 9 in the Appendix.

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Correspondence to Jochen Wulf.

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Responsible editor: Axel Hochstein

Appendix

Appendix

Table 8 Conformance with content-analysis research directives (based on Kolbe and Burnett 1991)
Table 9 Information on judge qualifications
Table 10 List of analyzed information services

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Wulf, J., Zarnekow, R. Technologies for the Electronic Distribution of Information Services - A Value Proposition Analysis. Electron Markets 20, 3–19 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12525-010-0027-x

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