One focus in this area is marketing, project communication and electronic commerce.
All these fields of research are intensively aimed at the Internet.
Presentation platform
The RelationShip-Online-Communication architecture on one hand is designed as a worldwide presentation platform, which informs all interested people about the way the project goes.
To publish the progress of the project in the Internet corresponds with the desire to give the international public a "look onto the maps" into the field of research of the university. The use of multimedia Internet-Services like the World Wide Web, streaming video and streaming audio comes in handy at this point. The hardware which can deal with such a tremendous amount of data has been gathered into a server-farm. This pool consists of a half dozen UNIX and NT computers, which are sponsored by Hewlett-Packard - one of the large RelationShip-Sponsors.
Turntable for Online-Marketing
Besides the information aspect is the RelationShip-Internet-Site turntable for the online-marketing.
All areas known from marketing-mix are present. Furthermore, you can find all real RelationShip-Events online and have comments with it. Hyperlinks which leads you to partners help to built a network with all participants. Products which have connections to RelationShip-Events can be viewed and ordered via a online-shop. This gives the great chance to explore and study the aspects of digital trading systems. The use of merchant-servers gives the possibility to generate an understanding and primary data, which usually not even viewable through a look into papers from online-information-broker companies. Just ideal: the involved student has direct and full access to the research results.
Group communication
Besides being the property presentation platform and turntable for the online-marketing, the online-communication architecture is base for a integrated group communication. The information and document exchange as well as the putting information into archives and regain these information of all project data is done with the group ware (Lotus Notes). This makes it possible for the virutal team to communicate without any barriers. Every team member is integrated via Internet or Lotus Notes and reachable for all other team members. It makes no difference if the team member is at the Fachhochschule Furtwangen or with a sponsor in Northern Germany or with a partner in Australia. The management reaches the information by using the GSM-Lines via notebook, modem or cellular phone.
Win understanding
Technically and scientifically the global scope of the project gives perceptions, which are based on projectmanagement/team work, marketing and electronic commerce and are very valuable in connection with virtual teams and virtual companies. The challenge of the RelationShip project gives sponsors an interesting field of experiment and research - not only in maritime, nautical areas. The challenge goes beyond the scope of it. Are you attracted by this? Just contact us! Be Part of the Challenge.
Your
J. Anton Illik
illik@fh-furtwangen.de
2. Februar 1998
