Purpose The COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent efforts to contain it have started economic downturn that may even surpass the global financial crisis (GFC). The purpose of this study is to uncover the features of enterprises’ resilience during and after an external shock such as the GFC might be helpful in predicting the shock impact on enterprises and setting proper policy measures for the upcoming COVID-19 crisis. Design/methodology/approach The authors analysed the impact of the GFC on the entrepreneurial population in/of the Czech Republic using marginal effects method on a large random sample of 4,478 enterprises. In this analysis, the authors defined two groups of enterprises – “winners” and “losers” – based on the company’s dissolution and performance indicators. Findings The GFC struck the enterprise population asymmetrically in terms of the enterprises’ characteristics but also in terms of time. Micro and small size companies are the most vulnerable to external shocks such as the GFC. Technological level plays an important role in the recovery phase, especially in the case of manufacturing micro enterprises. Research limitations/implications Although there are differences between the GFC and the COVID-19 crisis, the GFC was the only comparable shock in modern history in its global nature, depth and unpredicted occurrence. It can be expected that the impact on enterprises can be partly similar. Practical implications Government support of micro size companies should be the priority in the upcoming COVID-19 crisis. Supporting the innovation and technology progress might accelerate the recovery phase after the crisis especially in micro companies as well. Originality/value This paper presents interesting insights into the impact of external shocks such as the GFC or COVID-19 on enterprises. It uncovers typical features of “winners” or “losers” of such shocks.

No abstract

Extensive use of various types of IoT devices has resulted in high demand for developers with IoT skills. We have identified the challenges facing IoT developers and designed suitable student projects that aim to address these challenges. It is our experience, that it is important to match the IoT platform used for the project to the skills of the students to achieve optimal learning outcomes. In this paper, we describe two case studies that use high-quality modular IoT kits to accelerate the learning process and to allow students with relatively low technical skills to implement working solutions to real-world problems.

No abstract

Recent IT advances that include extensive use of mobile and IoT devices and wide adoption of cloud computing are creating a situation where existing architectures and software development frameworks no longer fully support the requirements of modern enterprise application. Furthermore, the separation of software development and operations is no longer practicable in this environment characterized by fast delivery and automated release and deployment of applications. This rapidly evolving situation requires new frameworks that support the DevOps approach and facilitate continuous delivery of cloud-based applications using micro-services and container-based technologies allowing rapid incremental deployment of application components. It is also becoming clear that the management of large-scale container-based environments has its own challenges. In this paper, we first discuss the challenges that developers of enterprise applications face today and then describe the Unicorn cloud framework (uu-Cloud) designed to support the development and deployment of cloud-based applications that incorporate mobile and IoT devices. We use a doctor surgery reservation application "Lekar" case study to illustrate how uuCloud is used to implement a large-scale cloud-based application.