UB Conference To Explore How New Technologies Are Changing The Way The World Conducts Business

BUFFALO, N.Y. -- Industry and academic experts from around the world will gather at the University at Buffalo on April 27-29 to investigate how a new wave of computer technologies is revolutionizing the way the world conducts business.

The conference, "Next Generation Enterprises: Virtual Organizations and Mobile Technologies," will feature an exposition of state-of-the-art technologies from the nation's top IT companies, as well as presentations from leading researchers who will discuss the impact of new technologies on business strategy, operation and competitiveness.

"This conference will be among the first worldwide to explore how emerging technologies are creating a new business culture," says conference co-chair Ram Ramesh, associate professor of management information systems in the UB School of Management.

"The way businesses are formed and organized, the way they staff their enterprises and manage employees, the way they transfer knowledge and communicate and the way they strategize and compete -- all of these areas are changing because of the emergence of new technologies," Ramesh says.

Co-organized by the UB schools of Management and Engineering and Applied Sciences, the conference will include a forum for chief information officers from various companies, and tutorials and workshops on new distance-learning, networking and Web-based technologies.

Keynote addresses will be delivered by Douglas Aldrich, vice president of strategic practice, A.T. Kearney/EDS; Patrick Bergmans, director of Xerox Research Center, Europe; Pallab Chatterjee, senior vice president, Texas Instruments; Joseph DeMauro, senior vice president, Bell Atlantic; John Gage, chief science officer, Sun Microsystems; Rajiv Gupta, manager of e-Speak operations, Hewlett Packard, and Kevin Kahn, director of communications architecture, Intel.

According to Ramesh, the expanding Internet and new technologies, such as video conferencing, portable digital notepads, wireless phone and email networks, data scanners and lap-top and hand-held computers, are creating a new business environment that is able to operate beyond the constrictions of time and space.

These technologies and the emergence of e-commerce, Ramesh says, are giving birth to virtual organizations that are able to assemble and disband almost overnight in response to changing market needs. The mobility, immediacy and impermanence of these organizations and business functions, he adds, are creating a new business culture with new opportunities and new problems for businesses.

"We hope that this conference will chart the beginnings of a course by which businesses can effectively harness these technologies and use them strategically," Ramesh says.

Corporate sponsors for the event include Bell Atlantic Foundation, Sun Microsystems, Hewlett Packard, EDS, i2 Corp, Nortel Networks, Empire State Development, Delaware North Companies and the IBM Center for Advanced Studies, Canada.

The proceedings of the conference, and the research of its participants, will be published in a special issue of Information Systems Frontiers, an academic journal edited by Ramesh and conference co-chair H.R. Rao, associate professor of management information systems in the UB School of Management.

For more information about the conference, call 716-645-3258 or go to www.som.buffalo.edu/isinterface/AIWORC.