Jorge Marx Gómez

Green IT: A Matter of Business and Information Systems Engineering?

This panel discusses the impact of Green IT on information systems and how information systems can meet environmental challenges and ensure sustainability. We wish to highlight the role of green business processes, and specifically the contributions that the management of these processes can play in leveraging the transformative power of IS in order to create an environmentally sustainable society. The management of business processes has typically been thought of in terms of business improvement alongside the dimensions time, cost, quality, or flexibility – the so-called ‘devil’s quadrangle’. Contemporary organizations, however, increasingly become aware of the need to create more sustainable, IT-enabled business processes that are also successful in terms of their economic, ecological, as well as social impact. Exemplary ecological key performance indicators that increasingly find their way into the agenda of managers include carbon emissions, data center energy, or renewable energy consumption (SAP 2010). The key challenge, therefore, is to extend the devil’s quadrangle to a devil’s pentagon, including sustainability as an important fifth dimension in process change.

Change management issues in Federated ERP systems: an approach for identifying requirements and possible solutions

In this paper, the domain of Federated Enterprise Resource Planning (FERP) systems is described. FERP systems consist of several service-oriented systems that implement the Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) functionality in a distributed manner. Within this context, this paper focuses on challenges and requirements that arise when updating systems and changing their orchestration. This paper describes similarities to change management issues of conventional ERP systems and it describes emerging issues that appear when dealing with a distributed ERP system. Moreover, this paper introduces possible solutions in order to ease the process of changes.

Federated ERP-systems on the basis of Web Services and P2P networks

In the harsh competition between todays enterprises the use of business software systems plays an important role. Software systems integration of different enterprise sectors is one of the most commonly discussed topics and the implementation of a Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) becomes more and more interesting not only for large companies but for Small and Medium-Sized Businesses (SMB) as well. This paper presents the approach of a Federated Enterprise Resource Planning (FERP) system on the basis of Web Services and Peer-to-Peer (P2P) networks as a first step towards vendor-independent ERP systems. In this work we propose a component-oriented system design and the application of the SOA paradigm. Furthermore, the distribution of ERP system components over P2P networks is considered. Finally we show an example business process and point out first evaluation activities.

Making Stakeholder Dialogue for Sustainability Issues Happen - Benefits, Reference Architecture and Pilot Implementation for Automated Sustainability Reporting a La Carte

Making stakeholder dialogue happen is a step forward in sustainability reporting. It includes mechanisms to involve key target groups and give feedback, facilities of user control and opportunities to fine tune reports to certain users, select report contents and adapt design to individual preferences. Today, one-way-communication on sustainability issues merely through one size fits all hard copies or simple electronic duplicates without any added value may hardly fulfil stakeholder expectations and reporting requirements. In contrast to the importance of these issues of communication in codes of conducts, standards, guidelines and other recommendations however, current reporting practice shows room for improvements, even for the best reporters. Hence, an outline is given on how to develop from early sustainability reporting stages towards a sophisticated approach, with emphasis on stakeholder dialogue and its core features, while fully exploiting the benefits of the internet and using its support.

DATA DEFECTS IN MATERIAL FLOW NETWORKS—CLASSIFICATION AND APPROACHES

First the basics of ecobalancing are briefly explained. In this connection the main focus is set on material flow networks. In the software tool Umberto®, material flow networks are used to model material flows, which are necessary for creation of inventory analysis. Furthermore, data defects in material flow networks are classified, and causes and consequences of these data defects are pointed out. Afterward, possible solutions with their benefits and drawbacks are proposed. A case study (life-cycle assessment of a coating material) shows both data defects and some solution attempts. Finally a short outlook outlines some other approaches, which should be investigated in future work.

Using event-driven process chains for model-driven development of business applications

Web services provide a functionality over networks. Most beneficial is their use if many web services are composed in order to develop an application. Due to their nature, web services can be used to support businesses if their composition matches the underlying business processes. However, the activities related to composition as well as design of a corresponding user interface are still time consuming. This is especially true in Small and Medium sized Enterprises (SMEs) due to their available resources. Therefore, we propose a light-eight concept for model-driven composition by attaching additional attributes to Event-driven Process Chains (EPCs) only. This allows modelling to model the web service composition as well as the user interaction. In this context, model-driven means that developers create models instead of source code. These models are then used to generate executable code. In contrast to established approaches, complete applications can be modelled with less effort. Therefore, even SMEs who cannot invest heavily into information technology can profit from the advantages of web service technology.

Web service-based specification and implementation of functional components in federated ERP-systems

ERP systems consist of many software components which provide specific functionality. However, these ERP systems are designed as an all-inone solution, often implementing functionality not needed. The paper presents the reference architecture of a federated ERP system which allows the distribution of ERP system components on the basis of Web Services and shows how these Web Services can be developed and provided by different software vendors. The architecture draws upon a hierarchical standardization model of data and service types. The model advances the reusability of data types and reduces the necessity of data transformation functions in business process descriptions. Furthermore the concrete architecture of a prototype implementation on the bases of open source software components is described.

Secure Web service-based resource sharing in ERP Networks

Abstract Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems integrate operational application systems of different enterprise sectors. Logistics, human resource management and business accountancy are the most important components, the business Junctions of ERP systems can be assigned to. Besides the advantages of an integrated solution a number of disadvantages arise from the complexity of such systems. Particularly small- and medium-sized enterprises (SME) are affected by typical disadvantages like high operating- and maintenance costs which means that they cannot afford to buy and maintain an enterprise-wide integrated ERP system. A feasible opportunity to counter these problems is to develop a distributed (federated) system architecture based on loosely coupled components and their functions in order to partly reduce the complexity of the super-ordinate system. The presented paper describes the distribution of ERP systems on the basis of Web Services and gives a first proposal of a prototype. ERP system functions are distributed within a peer-to-peer architecture and are managed by different network nodes (providers). The major risks of this approach are connected to security problems which appear when confidential enterprise data is handled. A continuously automated function (service) integration from service discovery until service response processing increases the already existing risks. An important issue in this context is the consideration of trust relationships between service consumers and service providers. In our proposed solution security configurations based on XML policies are used to meet the security requirements of both communication partners in an open network.

Green Computing & Sustainability

ZusammenfassungZur Realisierung einer nachhaltigen Unternehmensentwicklung im Sinne einer parallelen Verfolgung der gleichwertigen ökonomischen, ökologischen und sozialen Unternehmensziele bedarf es entsprechender betrieblicher Umweltinformationssysteme (BUIS). BUIS der nächsten Generation (BUIS 2.0) müssen den Besonderheiten einer nachhaltigen Unternehmensführung, die nicht von einem ökonomischen Oberziel dominiert wird, gerecht werden. Der vorliegende Beitrag bietet einen Überblick über den Status quo von BUIS in der Unternehmenspraxis und diskutiert Implikationen und aktuelle Herausforderungen für Wissenschaft und Praxis im Hinblick auf die Realisierung von BUIS der nächsten Generation. Auf Basis der Ergebnisse mehrerer Experteninterviews und Industrie-Workshops wird das breite Spektrum der in der Unternehmenspraxis vorzufindenden BUIS in Form eines morphologischen Kastens dargestellt. Dabei wird aufgezeigt, dass BUIS derzeit eher einen operativen oder nachsorgenden Fokus haben und als Insellösungen betrieben werden. Vorgeschlagen wird eine Referenzarchitektur, die als Ordnungsrahmen für die Entwicklung von BUIS 2.0 zur Unterstützung einer nachhaltigen Unternehmensentwicklung dienen kann.

Requirements Prioritization and Design Considerations for the Next Generation of Corporate Environmental Management Information Systems: A Foundation for Innovation

A multitude of heterogeneous data must be converted to environmental-conscious information and kept ready by Corporate Environmental Management Information Systems (CEMIS) to support environmental protection, sustainability, and energy efficiency within companies. Since these systems are currently not applying strategic information and decision support, contemporary systems do not cope with requirements from the sustainability discussion. Early identification of cause-and-effect-relationships is vitally important to be able to anticipate environmental impacts of decisions and, thus, to intervene in time. Otherwise the potential for acting precautious would remain unemployed. A resource-friendly design of business processes and their energyand material-efficient control additionally demands for sustainability-oriented organizational structures as well as incentives for all stakeholders involved. The authors strive for developing a new generation of CEMIS that copes with strategic sustainability aspects. They present the results from a survey that prioritizes the requirements the authors have gained from former inquiries, workshops and expert interviews. As a direct result of the survey, first implications for architectural concepts are presented. DOI: 10.4018/jitsa.2013010106 International Journal of Information Technologies and Systems Approach, 6(1), 98-116, January-June 2013 99 Copyright