Institute for Information Systems

Digital technologies offer extensive opportunities for new business models. In particular they offer agile, worldwide internet projects and contacts. This, however, also encourages the “dark side” of the internet: all kinds of cyber attacks are on the increase and threaten enterprises and, not least, our privacy.  
In our Competence Centre for Cyber Security & Cyber Resilience we bundle competences from a range of areas of information technology. We identify and develop mechanisms to build and operate a resilient system that can absorb malfunctions and attacks.
In the context of information technology our research questions come from the fields of governance, risk management, compliance (GRC), security and data protection. We link these questions with cyber security and resilience and look for application-oriented solutions.

Contact: Petra Asprion, petra.asprion@fhnw.ch

Further Information

The next wave in cloud computing has arrived. Cloud is already associated with digitalisation, agility and new business models and is now in the process of transforming tomorrow’s businesses.
Our Competence Center for Cloud Computing, Digitalisation & Transformation advises enterprises that are interested in Cloud solutions. We arm them for the future in this exciting domain and support companies in the transformation required at the level of IT and business as well as in the development and introduction of processes required.

Contact: Stella Gatziu Grivas, stella.gatziugrivas@fhnw.ch

Digital opportunities are changing our society and economy with increasing speed. Businesses that are not prepared will not be able to keep up with the pace while business areas that were previously considered stable could suddenly no longer be in demand with customers, in spite of the high quality of their products or services.  
Our Competence Center for Digital Economy & Business Agility supports leaders on their way to a digital, networked economy through innovative knowledge management and agile processes, so that businesses can in future continue to perform successfully in the market. To this end we use economy 4.0, an approach that explicitly anchors the digital element as the fourth production factor in management and take it into account on all levels of management and business.

Contact: Dino Schwaferts, dino.schwaferts@fhnw.ch

Creating added value across organisations using business concepts from e-procurement and business software to electronic invoicing and e-commerce – this is the task of the e-business team.
We support enterprises in the conceptualisation and realisation of solutions that involve networked systems as well as interdisciplinary tasks and, in so doing, prioritise the perspective of responsible management.
The Competence Center for E-Business works on research projects, delivers services and publishes its results primarily for readers from practice and undergraduate education. Our key topic areas include IT supported business concepts across organisations, e-business in customer-supplier relationships (B2B), e-commerce and the eXperience initiative.

Contact: Ralf Wölfle, ralf.woelfle@fhnw.ch

The learning.lab is committed to research and consulting that will lead to excellence in teaching at our university as well as to the sustainable management of knowledge and expertise in organisations.  
We have been commissioned by the Management Board to support learners in the School of Business by continually optimising the quality of teaching and learning and by innovation. In research and third-party consulting we concentrate on innovation projects in the field of teaching and learning for enterprises and, in the international context, from industrialised nations to the developing world.

Contact: Sebastian Linxen, sebastian.linxen@fhnw.ch  

Traditional business models have been continually developing in recent years and have begun to blur traditional boundaries between sectors. Technology solutions are used across sectors and enterprises are diversifying more and more. The subject areas and research fields of business information systems have become more multifaceted and are characterised by rapid and dynamic developments. As a result of global, digital transformation, innovation and technological trends are playing an increasingly significant role, also in universities.
The interdisciplinary team at the Competence Center New Trends & Innovation pursues the goal of finding innovative solutions to technological problems, identifying technological trends and researching these with innovative methods and approaches.

Contact: Rolf Dornberger, rolf.dornberger@fhnw.ch

The economic and technical challenges faced by the energy sector, such as the integration of decentralised renewable energy sources, call for approaches to solutions that intelligently combine both economic and technical aspects. The field of business information systems is predestined to carry out this task and provides support in the transformation of the energy sector to prepare it for future challenges.
To support the transformation of the energy sector and prepare enterprises for future challenges in this area, the Competence Center Smart Energy Systems is researching and developing solutions in the areas of Smart Grids, Smart Markets, new business models in the energy area as well as Smart Home.

Contact: Holger Wache, holger.wache@fhnw.ch  

The Competence Center Systems Engineering addresses complex issues from industry and business as well as public administration and society. We use clever algorithms, software technical solutions and/or new IT infrastructure. We adopt state-of-the-art methods from the fields of modelling, data analysis, simulation and optimisation to answer this question.
We focus on modelling and developing software systems. In terms of content, the topics of software and web engineering, programming and the development of tailored algorithms are central in our research, consulting and continuing education projects. For complex problems, methods from the field of computational intelligence can be employed that, for example, support pattern recognition, modelling processes or finding optimal solutions.

Contact: Thomas Hanne, thomas.hanne@fhnw.ch  

Digital change is not just about technology. It is very much shaped, lived and promoted by people. For this reason it is important to approach digital change from a systemic perspective and, in particular, to take into consideration the mutual organisational and social impact of digital transformation.
We research the influence of digital technologies on business and society and how the successful transformation of business strategies and business models can be realised using IT innovations. The goal of our work is to combine business and IT in order to better understand the far-reaching influence of innovative information technology on enterprises and their employees and to contribute to shaping the development of sustainable organisations.

Contact: Petra Asprion, petra.asprion@fhnw.ch