About the Project

Dear visitors of this site,

My name is Elena Ilina. I am MSc student at the University of Liverpool and this website is dedicated to my dissertation project.

The project is concerned about IT infrastructure management, in particular about software asset acquisitions. Project's aim is to investigate how web technologies might assist in software purchase decisions. It is assumed that technologies such as semantic web may be used for managing and retrieving information about software products available in the Network if their distributors agree. Potential customers should be able to review, compare and select software products suiting best to their needs.

Project aim and goals

The aim of the project is to investigate how semantic web technologies can be used for improving software acquisition process.

The main goals include:

• Investigate how software acquisition is performed in practise, and which methods and quidelines are useful (shown in the literature review, chapter 2).
• Identify which software factors are importnat to consider in the software selecton process. The subjective opinion of IT professionals and managers is acquired in the online survey (chapter 3 presents the research and its analysis)
• Describe a possible solution on the example of a semantic application prototype (chapter 4 for analysis and design, chapter 5 for implementation description).
• Develop a case study for testing of the prototype and critically examine its operation (chapter 6).
• Explain how the developed approach can be further improved and used in practical settings (chapter 6).

If you have an experience of managing IT assets or take part in related decisions, this project would benefit from your input in the Survey