Recent technological developments in the IT sector offer new possibilities for business process management. On the one hand, technologies such as ubiquitous computing and sensor networks allow capturing real-world data in real-time. On the other hand, innovations such as in-memory technology enable an increased information processing capability, i.e. high-performance computing.
Ubiquitous computing aims to leverage real-time technologies to collect real-world data for constantly capturing the status and environment of a process in a structured way. However, many other sources and types of unstructured data such as texts, images, or audio and video files also contain valuable information for better decision making. Researchers and practitioners have labeled the approach of continuously harvesting vast amounts of structured and unstructured data in an integrated fashion as "big data."
In-memory technology, another recent innovation, enables an increased information processing capability by a factor of 100,000 compared to traditional database management systems. This approach allows an analysis of big data in a timely manner, enables real-time control of business processes, and opens the gate for new applications to be developed. While the new technology for enabling real-time and high-performance computing is available, the business value created through these technologies has not been analysed in detail yet. Against this background, several studies at the Institute of Information Systems are dedicated to analysing the business value of real-time and high-performance computing.
