Dear Visitor,

With Information and Communication Technology (ICT) becoming increasingly important in modern Society, the proper utilization of ICT and ICT-related innovations appear to be a key priority in current business developments. This is critical to meet the challenging societal demands and to improve the competitiveness of industry. Succeeding in this comes through a long and winding road that would hopefully lead to a borderless information space with open and stable markets for electronic communication services and the emerging digital services economy. We are not yet there although we observe ICT-driven globalization of world's biggest enterprises, as a step forward. The constantly increasing IT budgets of companies worldwide clearly indicate a move towards the ICT era.

Hence, ICT-related utilizations and innovations have great potential for bringing about improvements of high societal relevance: facilitating collaborations and social networking; managing resources in intelligent ways; collecting, controlling, and streaming data. Moving forward in these directions would not only mean satisfying societal needs but would mean also greater profits for enterprises, which would in turn support our overcoming the current world economic difficulties. At the same time, by allowing enterprises to better manage resources, ICT gives a chance for a greener world where we consume less energy. This would be good for the economy but what is even more important is the environment: facilitated by ICT, we could hopefully reach sustainable development. Thus, it is not surprising that ICT developments receive huge attention within the European Union.

This inspired us to establish in 2007 the Interdisciplinary Institute for Collaboration and Research on Enterprise Systems and Technology (IICREST). In its push for promoting and exploiting Bulgaria's potential in the creation and introduction of new services and technologies, IICREST has been receiving essential management and expert support from its extended network to Greece, Portugal, Switzerland, The Netherlands, and UK. This is how we all intend to support the ICT developments within the European Union, targeted at the European citizens.

I have been happy and honored to contribute to the achievement of those goals. Come together!