BUSINESS INFORMATION SYSTEMS: TRENDS AND TECHNOLOGICAL CHALLENGES

Although many companies are using computer-based business information systems (BIS) for more than 30 years, this area is still characterized by a very rapid technological development, "technological jumps ", and changing user requirements. Especially during the last years new technological trends and solutions like object-oriented and object-relational database management systems, decentralization, client/server, data warehouse, multi-media support, and workflow management systems have been developed, offering new possibilities and chances but also challenges and risks. This paper describes and characterizes these developments, explains the driving forces behind them, and discusses some of the impacts and potentials of these trends and technologies on the development of business information systems.