On 20 and 21 October 2011, the successful kick-off meeting of the Erasmus project "Transfer of Appropriate Requirements for Global Education and Technology(TARGET II)" took place in Almaty, Kazakhstan, hosted by the Kazakh-British Technical University (KBTU). As a continuation of the successful "TARGET" project, "TARGET II" has set itself the top priority of supporting the expansion of academic education in Central Asia as a transnational project. As a side effect, this should help to improve the economic situation in this region and thus raise the standard of living. Ammar Memari attended the meeting as a representative of the Department of Computing Science at the University of Oldenburg and presented the relevant facilities, opportunities and programmes in the fields of sustainability, Computing Science and economics for the students participating in the project. In connection with this project, 12 students and scientists from Central Asia are expected to come to the University of Oldenburg in the winter semester 2012/13 to study, research and work.

We are pleased to inform you, as students of the University of Oldenburg, about an additional offer from our Business Information Systems / Very Large Business Applications (VLBA) department in cooperation with SAP Education.

In addition to our regular courses with SAP content, we are offering students from the University of Oldenburg and all other universities in Germany the exclusive opportunity to take part in a training course including official SAP certification. The course from 19 March to 30 March 2012, followed by a certification exam, is aimed at students from all degree programmes and Schools.

TERP10 stands for "Training Enterprise Resource Planning in 10 days" and is offered as a two-week block course regularly during the lecture-free period. During the course, you will acquire knowledge in the field of Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) and also gain practical experience in working with SAP systems. The course concludes with an examination to become an "SAP Certified Solution Architect ERP-Integration of Business Processes". After passing the exam, you will receive an official SAP certificate that is fully recognised on the job market.

Of course, we are also available for personal counselling Andreas Solsbach or Dirk Peters. Registration for the TERP10 course is now open.

We hope you enjoy the course and look forward to welcoming you to one of our next events.

Last Monday, 24 October 2011, Jan Aalmink, an external doctoral candidate from the Department of Information Systems / VLBA, successfully completed his thesis defence on the topic "Enterprise Tomography - an efficient diagnostic method for the semi-automatic localisation of polymorphic integration concepts in enterprise software systems". The examining board was made up of Prof Dr Jorge Marx Gómez, Prof Dr Michael Sonnenschein, Prof Dr Helmut Krcmar and Dr Hans Fleischhack. After completing his thesis defence, the newly minted "Dr" hosted a celebratory champagne reception.

We would like to congratulate Jan Aalmink and wish him all the best for his future career!

The joint kick-off event of the Environmental Technology Network Oldenburg and the IT-for-Green project was a complete success. More than 80 representatives from business and science discussed new ways of joint efforts in the environmental sector and ways of mobilising the various competences together. Renowned speakers emphasised the importance of integration into a well-functioning network in order to achieve more together for one's own company. Oldenburg in particular has a lot to offer companies in the areas of the environment and sustainability.

You can find a more detailed review of the event on the IT for Green project homepage.

The International Corner at the dialogue event "Competence through networking: business and science in dialogue" from the Environmental Information Systems Knowledge Exchange Project moderated by research associate Andreas Solsbach, CvO University of Oldenburg, and Prof. Dr André Calitz from Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University, South Africa, produced the following results. The discussion was lively and followed by university and business guests from Germany, Cuba, Lithuania and South Africa. Joint continuation in the form of projects based on the ideas exchanged is being considered.

Further information on the EISKE project and the results of the International Corner of the dialogue event "Competence through networking - business and science in dialogue" can be found on the EISKE project page.

The UNO networks companies and scientific institutions in the field of environmental technology from the Oldenburg (Oldb.) region in Lower Saxony.

In the context of further networking, the UNO informs potential participants about the structure, services and advantages of this network.

Reducing the use of materials and energy in companies has a direct impact on the environment as well as direct economic effects. To realise this, however, new-generation BUIS are required, which have a clearly strategic character. The IT-for-Green project is working on using IT to make companies and their processes more environmentally friendly and to ensure that environmental protection and cost reduction go hand in hand to make sustainability affordable.

UNO and IT-for-Green cordially invite you to a joint kick-off event on 13 October 2011 from 15:00 at the TGO.

Information on registration and the programme of the kick-off event can be found in the official invitation (PDF).

The project group of the Department of Information Systems I/VLBA is organising the final presentation of the project "Sustainable CRM for (E-)Mobility Services with SOA" on 12 October 2011. The project dealt with the question of how sustainable (intermodal) mobility can be enabled as an "enabler" for electromobility and supported by customer relationship management. The result is the Jinengo software platform, a mobile information service that combines offers from various mobility providers based on user preferences in order to create customised mobility offers that take sustainability aspects into account. An adaptive software agent structure enables efficient and decentralised expansion through the integration of any services, e.g. for additional means of transport or context information (weather, traffic information, etc.). If you would like to find out more about Jinengo, you can find detailed information at www.jinengo.com. Appointment data

Subject: Final presentation Sustainable CRM for (E-)Mobility with SOA
Time: 12.10.2011 15:00 - 16:00
Location: University of Oldenburg, A05 0-056

We would be delighted to welcome you to the presentation and subsequent discussion.

In the period from 27 September 2011 to 23 March 2012, the following doctoral students from Cuba will be guests at our Institute:

• Dania Pérez Armayor,
• Ariel Racet Valdés,
• Alberto Morell Pérez.

They will have their last 6-month stay in Oldenburg and will complete their doctoral theses during this period so that they can take part in the internal colloquium here. They will then have to defend their theses in Cuba.

As part of the "Environmental Information System Knowledge Exchange Project" (EISKE) and the "Developing Sustainability" (DevSus) projects, Prof. Dr.-Ing. Jorge Marx Gómez and Andreas Solsbach took part in the IT Industry Symposium "Knowledge is Power" on 22 July 2011 in Port Elizabeth, South Africa. Prof Dr Jorge Marx Gómez gave the keynote speech at the symposium on "Case Studies of Business Intelligence in Germany - Exploring several case studies of companies in Germany who have implemented Business Intelligence". In the further course of the stay, a course on "Operational Environmental Information Systems" was held at the Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University, South Africa from 25 July to 29 July 2011 as part of the EISKE project and corresponding discussions were held with researchers and companies. Source: Business Environmental Information Systems course at the NMMU, South Africa

Prof Matjaz Mulej, Faculty of Economics and Business, University of Maribor, gave a lecture on "Socially Responsible Care for Environmental Information" to around 40 Master's students of Business Information Systems, Computing Science and Sustainability, Economics and Management as part of the block course "Business Environmental Information Systems" (BUIS) (course in English) from 1 to 5 August 2011.

On 14 July 2011, the members of the ERDF project"IT-for-Green" met for the second time - this time in the Zimeliensaal at the University of Osnabrück. The meeting focussed on the requirements for BUIS 2.0 and, with the help of experts and practice partners, the aim was to determine what a new type of operational environmental information system needs to achieve.

After the welcome address, the first step was to show what had been achieved in the project up to that point and what could still be expected in the coming months. This was followed by the presentation and discussion of an initial architecture and its functionality.

The talks and discussions that were to follow for the three modules of the project - "Green IT", "Green Logistics and Sustainable Product Development" and "Sustainability Reporting" - took place in so-called cafés. A centralised list of requirements was drawn up in advance, which was to be critically amended, expanded or aggregated. The practice partners in particular, but also the development team, were able to contribute actively to the discussions in the individual areas and were guided by moderators.

The preliminary results were then presented by the moderators to the entire IT for Green team and led to further interesting discussions. This opened the eyes to aspects that had previously been unconsciously ignored.

A further evaluation of these results is currently taking place and will be incorporated into the development of the next generation BUIS and thus differentiate it from current solutions.

A photo gallery of this event can be found under"Events".

From 6 - 8 July 2011, Oldenburg scientists from the IT-for-Green team presented the concept of next-generation BUIS to an international audience in Poznan, Poland.

The conference proceedings (Information Technologies in Environmental Engineering: New Trends and Challenges) contain various contributions on the topic.

On Wednesday, 13 July 2011 from 16:00 - 18:00 (c.t.) in Lecture Hall B, a practical lecture by Dr Nico Brehm, Managing Director of RepuGraph GmbH, will take place as part of the "E-Business" event. The topic of the lecture is "The online evaluation system RepuGraph - current insights, techniques and challenges".

Brief description of the presentation:
rating systems on the Internet are controversial. This refers to systems that collect ratings about sellers, products, companies or public organisations via the Internet. These systems are actually intended to create trust and promote the formation of opinion - and are often used for this purpose. On the other hand, however, the manipulation of reviews arouses mistrust.

The RepuGraph rating system is an external and independent online service (SaaS) for the management of individualised company and organisation ratings submitted by customers. RepuGraph is a tool for the implementation of individual assessment concepts according to the specific requirements of the organisations to be assessed.

The presentation will provide up-to-date information on the use of online evaluation systems in various application scenarios. Using the RepuGraph online evaluation system as an example, the problems and proposed solutions that currently exist when using online evaluation systems, particularly in e-commerce, will be shown. In addition to a general introduction to the problem, specific techniques for recognising manipulation of ratings are presented. Suggestions for future verifiably secure online rating systems are discussed.

All interested parties are cordially invited to attend the presentation and take part in the subsequent discussion.

Inti Y. González Herrera from the Universidad Central "Marta Abreu" de Las Villas / Santa Clara, Cuba will be a guest at the Department of Information Systems I / Very Large Business Applications (VLBA) at the University of Oldenburg from 22 June to 26 July 2011.

During this time, he will present his research as part of his dissertation and work on projects at the institute. His stay is supported and funded by the DevSus project.

SUBMISSION DUE DATE: September 15, 2011

SPECIAL ISSUE ON "IT goes green: Systemic approaches to IT policy making, design, evaluation and management"

International Journal of Information Technologies and the Systems Approach (IJITSA)

Guest Editors:
Dr José-Rodrigo Córdoba Pachón, Royal Holloway, University of London
Dr Jorge Marx Gómez, University of Oldenburg, Germany

INTRODUCTION: Economic recession, global environmental concerns and availability of mobile technologies among other factors have contributed to the emergence of alternative computing infrastructures, products and service that promise individuals and organisations cleaner and more responsible information processing. A scheme that is now being popularised and put forward by technology providers is that of "cloud" computing, which could help organizations reduce their operation and capital expenses whilst giving flexibility to consumers and end users. The benefits of this and other schemes are yet to be realised in particular regarding their environmental impacts within and beyond data processing facilities. Concerns about availability of energy to fuel computing platforms, mobile devices, offices or households still remain. Technology providers are competing to provide sophisticated devices and services whilst trying to balance their production and recycling processes with their carbon footprints. There are opportunities and challenges lying ahead for technology designers, managers and users in taking environmental and green concerns forward.

OBJECTIVE OF THE SPECIAL ISSUE: This special issue aims to facilitate debate and contributions on how the systems approach in its various forms and applications can help addressing issues of design, service use and implementation of computing infrastructures and facilities that emerge when environmental requirements are to be met. We intend to gather theoretical and practical contributions from academics practitioners, policy makers or planners who can provide systemic accounts of how technology can better conceived of or positioned in the wider societal and environmental spheres.

RECOMMENDED TOPICS: Topics to be discussed in this special issue include (but are not limited to) the following:

• Cloud computing, private or public clouds, mobile clouds
• Design of "green" devices, computing platforms or computing infrastructures
• Evaluation of environmental impacts of information systems
• Information technology recycling
• Systemic methodology to plan and implement green IT policies or regulations
• Green supply chains supported by information technologies
• Conceptualisations of relationships between regulation, production and reuse of information technologies.
• Green IT Frameworks and Metrics
• Green IT Strategies (virtualisation, consolidation, cloud computing, responsible disposal, 3Rs, among others)
• Green IT curriculum

Further information (PDF): IJITSA Special Issue IT goes Green - cfp

Prof. Carlos Perez Risquet from the Universidad Central "Marta Abreu" de Las Villas / Santa Clara, Cuba will be a guest at the Department of Information Systems I / Very Large Business Applications (VLBA) from 16 June to 18 July 2011 as part of a research stay at the University of Oldenburg.

Prof Carlos Perez is a proven expert in the field of computational visualistics and is visiting the department as a guest researcher as part of the Export Master's degree programme "Environmental Management Information Systems" to Latin America project.

Hello students,

We are pleased to inform you that an excursion to CEWE COLOR AG & Co OHG is taking place as part of the Business Informatics II lecture. We will be welcomed and supervised by Dr Joachim Marz (Head of IT).

Date: Monday 27 June 2011, from 14:00 s.t. to approx. 16:15
Location: Meerweg 30 - 32, 26133 Oldenburg

Contents:

• Laboratory tours
• Presentation of CEWE COLOR AG & Co. OHG
• Presentation IT
• Project "New Data Centre at the Oldenburg site"
• Discussion

This excursion is intended to show students the scope of information management in practice.

Yours sincerely,
The lecturers

The Department of Information Systems I / VLBA, together with RepuGraph GmbH and other partners, is conducting a survey of consumers in Germany on the subject of "Evaluation systems on the Internet". If you have not already done so, we would be delighted if you would participate. The survey is anonymous. Completing the questionnaire takes a maximum of 5 minutes and helps to improve online rating systems. We will be happy to send you the results once they have been analysed.

The student Oliver Norkus (Master of Business Informatics) was awarded the "OLB/EWE Prize for Special Student Achievements" on 5 May 2011. In addition to excellent traditional credits, the jury was also impressed by his diverse and intensive commitment to projects and voluntary work.

IT-for-Green aims to use information processing tools to make companies and their processes more environmentally friendly. The performance of currently implemented BUIS does not meet the requirements of the sustainability debate, as BUIS must already start in product development as part of environmentally integrated production and strategic decision-making and not - as has been the case up to now - only as an end-of-pipe solution for the mere, subsequent documentation of environmental indicators. It is therefore very important to recognise cause-and-effect relationships in good time in order to be able to proactively counter environmental impacts. Significant potential for the prophylactic aspect of environmental protection will otherwise remain unutilised. In the ERDF-funded project IT-for-Green: Environmental, Energy and Resource Management with BUIS 2.0, a next-generation BUIS is being developed based on three integrated modules that map the entire life cycle from the input side (energy efficiency measurement of the ICT used) to the transformation side (logistics and sustainable product development) and the output side (corporate communication and sustainability reports). The overall architecture provides for a collection of so-called Green Web Services. In future, these will form the basis of a service platform (Green Service Mall) and will be available to interested parties according to the software-as-a-service principle. The kick-off meeting took place on 8 April 2011 in the Senate meeting room of the University of Oldenburg. Representatives from the universities of Oldenburg, Osnabrück, Göttingen and the associated partner Lüneburg as well as from the companies CeWe Color AG & Co. OHG, erecon AG, Hellmann Worldwide Logistics GmbH & Co. KG, iits GmbH & Co. KG, SAP AG and the municipality of Spiekeroog were present. In addition, ecco ecology + communication Unternehmensberatung GmbH introduced itself in its role as network and transfer manager. Further information on IT-for-Green can be found on the project page.

We are pleased to announce that the project proposal "Project for knowledge exchange of environmental information systems" has been approved for funding by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research within the framework of international co-operation in education and research. The project will start on 1 May 2011 in co-operation between the University of Oldenburg, Germany, and the Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University, South Africa, with the aim of exchanging knowledge between the two project partners for a subsequent application in collaboration with industrial partners at international level.

On Thursday, 10 March 2011, the postal ballot was counted in the specialist group "Business Environmental Information Systems" (WI-BUIS) together with the specialist group "Computing Science in Environmental Protection" of the German Informatics Society.

We are pleased to announce that Prof. Dr.-Ing. Jorge Marx Gómez has been elected as spokesperson of the specialist group. Prof Dr Volger Wohlgemuth (HTW Berlin) and Prof Dr Corinna Lang (Anhalt University of Applied Sciences) were elected as representatives.

The kick-off meeting will take place on Friday, 8 April 2011 from 13:00 to 16:00 at the University of Oldenburg, Haarentor campus.

IT-for-Green aims to use information processing to make companies and their processes (more) environmentally friendly. This requires special corporate environmental information systems (BUIS). Currently available systems only implement the requirement for legally compliant environmental behaviour. These systems therefore fall far short of the possibilities offered by IT.

BUIS of the next generation (BUIS 2.0) must also have a much more strategic character and be able to offer decision-makers in the company direct support for action.

The core team - headed by Prof Dr Jorge Marx Gómez - consists of the universities of Oldenburg, Osnabrück, Göttingen and the associated partner Lüneburg as well as the companies SAP AG, CeWe Color AG & Co OHG, Hellmann Worldwide Logistics GmbH & Co KG, erecon AG, iits GmbH and the municipality of Spiekeroog. In addition, over 30 companies are contributing their practical experience to the project.

Further information on IT-for-Green can be found on the project page.

We are pleased to inform you, as students of the University of Oldenburg, about an additional offer from our Business Information Systems / Very Large Business Applications (VLBA) department in cooperation with SAP Education.

In addition to our regular courses with SAP content, we are offering students from the University of Oldenburg and all other universities in Germany the exclusive opportunity to take part in a training course including official SAP certification. The course from 28 August to 9 September 2011, followed by a certification exam, is aimed at students from all degree programmes and Schools.

TERP10 stands for "Training Enterprise Resource Planning in 10 days" and is being offered for the third time as a two-week block event during the lecture-free period. During the course, you will acquire knowledge from the field of Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) and also gain practical experience in working with SAP systems. The course concludes with an examination to become an "SAP Certified Solution Architect ERP-Integration of Business Processes". After passing the exam, you will receive an official SAP certificate that is fully recognised on the job market.

Of course, we are also available for personal counselling Andreas Solsbach or Dirk Peters. Registration for the TERP10 course is now open.

We hope you enjoy the course and look forward to welcoming you to one of our next events.

Andreas Rehfeldt (6th semester Business Informatics student) has qualified for a scholarship from the Programme to Increase the Mobility of German Students (PROMOS). His stay abroad for a semester at the University of West Georgia, USA, from August 2011 to December 2011 will be funded.

The EU-Erasmus project TARGET(Transfer of Appropriate Requirements for Global Education and Technology) offers scholarships to citizens from Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tadzhikistan, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan. The project offers mobility scholarships for students and staff from Central Asia to European partner universities. The deadline for online applications was 20 February. All applications were carefully reviewed by the universities and checked against the admission requirements of the respective university. On 8 and 9 March 2001, the selection workshop took place in Valencia, Spain, at which the final list of approved mobility scholarships was drawn up. At this meeting, organised by the Universidad Politécnica de Valencia, representatives of all European partner universities met to draw up the list of accepted Bachelor students, Master students, doctoral candidates, post-docs and research assistants, with particular attention to fairness and equality. The University of Oldenburg will accept four Master's students, four doctoral candidates, two of whom will receive a full-time scholarship, and two further exchange students for nine months. One post-doc and one research assistant will also be accepted. The mobility scholarships will be awarded in the fields of business informatics, environmental informatics and environmental sciences. The final selection results will be published on 26 March.

You can find us at CeBIT in Hanover from 1 to 5 March (Hall 9, Stand B24).

Sustainability is the focus of the university-affiliated Institute ecco (ecology + communication Unternehmensberatung GmbH), which is presenting next-generation corporate environmental information systems at CeBIT in close cooperation with the Oldenburg business information scientist Prof Dr Jorge Marx Gómez. Up to now, information systems have only supported companies in complying with environmental legislation. According to Marx Gómez, if they start in the planning phase of the product life cycle, considerable potential for material and energy savings can be mobilised and costs reduced. The ertemis research network (European Research and Transfer Network for Environmental Management Information Systems) aims to improve the knowledge transfer between business and science and promote research into interdisciplinary issues in the field of corporate environmental information systems.

In addition, two corporate environmental information systems (ProPlaNET, STORM) developed in the Department of Information Systems will be presented. They enable the sustainable evaluation of projects with citizen participation and globally standardised reporting by companies that involve social communities.

Source: University of Oldenburg press service