Introduction

This book offers a careful selection of the best contributions to the Fifth Conference of the Italian Association for Information Systems (http://www.itais2008.org), which took place at the European School of Management, ESCP-EAP, in Paris (France) on December 13–14, 2008, in conjunction with the International Conference on Information Systems (ICIS 2008). ItAIS (http://www.itais.org) is the Italian Chapter of the Association for Information Systems (AIS, http://www.aisnet.org). It was established in 2003 as and has since been promoting the exchange of ideas, experience, and knowledge among both academics and professionals committed to the development, management, organization and use of information systems. The annual itAIS conference is the major annual event of the Italian Information System community and is thought of as an international forum among researchers in the field. The conference aims to bring together researchers, scientists, engineers, and scholar students to exchange and share their experiences, new ideas, and research results about all aspects of Intelligent Systems, and discuss the practical challenges encountered and the solutions adopted. The previous editions took place in Venice on 2007, in Milan on 2006, in Verona on 2005 and in Naples on 2004.