The role of Enterprise portals in Enterprise Integration

Today’s enterprises are moving business systems to the Internet - to connect people, business processes, and people to business processes in enterprise and across enterprise boundaries. The portal brings it all together: business processes, departmental sites, knowledge management resources, enterprise management systems, CRM systems, analytics, email, calendars, external content, transactions, administration, workflow, and more. The goal of this paper is to present the role of the Enterprise Portal in internal and external enterprise integration.Portal, Enterprise Portal, Integration, ETL, EAI, EII

The nature of virtual communities

The impressive development of electronic communication techniques has given rise to virtual\ud communities. The nature of these computer-mediated communities has been the subject of much recent\ud debate. Are they ordinary social groups in electronic form, or are they fundamentally different from\ud traditional communities? Understanding virtual communities seems a prerequisite for the design of better\ud communication systems. To clarify this debate, we will resort to the classical sociological distinction\ud between small traditional communities (based on personal relations) and modern social groups (bound by\ud looser, more impersonal links). We will argue that the discussion about virtual communities is often\ud vitiated by a simplistic assimilation to traditional communities, whereas they may be in fact quite different\ud and much more impersonal. Virtual communities are often bound by reference to common objects or\ud goals, and not by personal relations. In this respect, virtual communities are just another example of a\ud long-term evolution of modern society toward more abstract social relationships

Distributed simulation and the grid: Position statements

The Grid provides a new and unrivaled technology for large scale distributed simulation as it enables collaboration and the use of distributed computing resources. This panel paper presents the views of four researchers in the area of Distributed Simulation and the Grid. Together we try to identify the main research issues involved in applying Grid technology to distributed simulation and the key future challenges that need to be solved to achieve this goal. Such challenges include not only technical challenges, but also political ones such as management methodology for the Grid and the development of standards. The benefits of the Grid to end-user simulation modelers also are discussed

RealTimeChess: Lessons from a Participatory Design Process for a Collaborative Multi-Touch, Multi-User Game

We report on a long-term participatory design process during which we designed and improved RealTimeChess, a collaborative but competitive game that is played using touch input by multiple people on a tabletop display. During the design process we integrated concurrent input from all players and pace control, allowing us to steer the interaction along a continuum between high-paced simultaneous and low-paced turn-based gameplay. In addition, we integrated tutorials for teaching interaction techniques, mechanisms to control territoriality, remote interaction, and alert feedback. Integrating these mechanism during the participatory design process allowed us to examine their effects in detail, revealing for instance effects of the competitive setting on the perception of awareness as well as territoriality. More generally, the resulting application provided us with a testbed to study interaction on shared tabletop surfaces and yielded insights important for other time-critical or attention-demanding applications.

Specification Techniques for Multi-Modal Dialogues in the U-Wish Project

In this paper we describe the development of a specification\ud technique for specifying interactive web-based services. We\ud wanted to design a language that can be a means of\ud communication between designers and developers of interactive services, that makes it easier to develop web-based services fitted to the users and that shortens the pathway from design to implementation. The language, still under development, is based on process algebra and can be\ud connected to the results of task analysis. We have been\ud working on the automatic generation of executable prototypes\ud out of the specifications. In this way the specification\ud language can establish a connection between users, design\ud and implementation. A first version of this language is\ud available as well as prototype tools for executing the specifications. Ideas will be given as to how to make the connection between specifications and task analysis

Effective Virtual Teams for New Product Development

At present, the existing literature shows that the factors which influence the effectiveness of virtual teams for new product development are still ambiguous. To address this problem, a research design was developed, which includes detailed literature review, preliminary model and field survey. From literature review, the factors which influence the effectiveness of virtual teams are identified and these factors are modified using a field survey. The relationship between knowledge workers (people), process and technology in virtual teams is explored in this study. The results of the study suggest that technology and process are tightly correlated and need to be considered early in virtual teams. The use of software as a service, web solution, report generator and tracking system should be incorporated for effectiveness virtual teams

Applications of computer communications in education.

Applications of computer communications can be used in many ways in education. An overview is given of a number of categories of computer communications applications in learning-related activities. Particular attention is given to a new type of system called a course-support environment. In this type of system a database is integrated with Web-based tools and applications, and used to generate a course-support environment accessed via a standard Web browser. Some examples are given. The article moves on to an overview of various issues confronting the acceptance of computer communication systems in educational settings, and indicates some of the ways in which computer communications engineers will have to deal with those issue

Transforming Organisational Culture through the Impact of Information Integration

Over the last 2-3 decades, investments in the new information technology (NIT) have left a deep impression on the life of organisations, that goes beyond ample differences in each organisation’s degree of automatisation. Furthermore, although the generalisation of NIT investment has not produced, on short and medium term, the expected effects on financial and organisational performance, its trend has remained on the increase, and the preoccupation with the development and the implementation of new technologies remains associated with the 'ice-breaker' imagine in almost any field. The ensuing connection between NIT investment and performance is compressed in the celebrated productivity paradox (Solow’s paradox): 'We can see the computer age everywhere, except for productivity statistics'. Solow contradicts the supposition that the large scale use of computers will radically and directly influence productivity. Research has demonstrated that although technology is one of the most important factors that influence productivity and that, although at least in theory, all countries have equal access to technological innovation, in fact, productivity is influenced by many other factors (acquiring physical and human capital, infrastructure, the structure of the market, demographic evolutions, the degree of competition etc). NIT has radically changed the business environment, and consequently, the organisational culture; however, this change cannot be equated with increased efficiency or increased welfare.organisational culture, new information technology, integration