Discussion

In this era of emerging technology, the organizations are completely dependent on advanced technologies. They develop strategies for implementing and using information technology in the organization. IT strategy is a well developed plan that is used by the IT professionals of an organization (Arvidsson, Holmström and Lyytinen 2014). IT strategy covers the information regarding technology management, cost management, software as well as hardware management. It also includes risk management plan and risk mitigation strategies that are involved in dealing with IT management. Development and execution of IT strategy needs strong leadership. The chief information officer plays an important role in this process.

This report discusses about the roles and responsibilities of the main stakeholders in the organization like CEO, CFO, CIO, CCO and external customers. The top five concerns of these stakeholders are also discussed. The business situation, needs and priorities are also discussed in details (Cassidy 2016). This report also gives a brief idea regarding the organizational structure as well as its capabilities. This report also discusses about the business challenges as well as IT risks that are involved in an organization. This report gives a brief idea about the budget of that will be required by the IT department.

The main stakeholders and their roles are explained below.

CEO: Chief Executive Officer is the head of the management team. They are responsible for developing IT strategy and policy for the entire organization (Chou 2013). They are responsible for making strategic level decisions.

CFO: Chief Financial Officer makes the financial budget of the entire organization. They are responsible for financial planning of the IT strategy. They plan about the IT resources along with its cost.

CIO: Chief Information Officer is the head of the information technology.  Their main responsibility is to develop strategic goals for the purpose of increasing the accessibility of information. They are responsible for managing integrated systems.  

These stakeholders play a major role in the developing IT strategy (Zissis and Lekkas  2012).  Security and data breach is the main concern for the organization. Information technology is vulnerable to several threats and risks. These threats and risks can cause loss of sensitive data and affect the users. Data loss can also affect the reputation of the organization. The organization must incorporate strong security policies in its IT strategy for the purpose of protecting the valuable data of the organization.   

The business situation of Qantas has been analyzed. The following information is found out from its analysis:

Strategy Recipients and Stakeholders

Strengths: The strength of a company must be maximized. Their strong expertise and their dedication are considered to be their main strength. The service quality provided by the organization is said to be top rated (Zissis and Lekkas  2012). They have a strong network in their campus.  IT solutions provided by this company is well rated. They provide unique IT solutions and have competitive advantage over its competitors.

Weaknesses: Funding, staffing levels and strategic planning of the company is considered to be its weaknesses. There is no effective governance and there is lack of coordination among the staffs.  There are certain flaws in the strategic plan that is developed by the company. There is no transparency in the decision making and planning process of the organization (Peppard and Ward 2016). These weaknesses must be minimized.

Opportunities: IT is an emerging sector. This company has several opportunities to grow and develop its business. There are several for growing its business. They have the opportunity to build new products and services.

Threats: There is huge competition in the IT market. The company is under threat because IT companies are growing at a fast face and it might affect the business of Qantas.

The IT strategy must be developed in order to maximize its strengths and minimize its weaknesses. They must aim at taking advantage of the opportunities and overcoming the threats. The strengths and weaknesses of the company are internal to the company and therefore these can be controlled. The opportunities and threats of the company are extrinsic to the company and these are not under the control of the company.

The company must be able to deliver efficient IT products and services to the clients. The customer needs must be identified in order to develop a product that will satisfy the customers. The products and services must be able to create value for the customers (Stair and Reynolds 2013). The performance of the products and services must be high level. Strong security features must be incorporated in the business plan and IT strategy in order to protect the sensitive information of the users and in order to protect the reputation of the company. Their main expectation and requirement is to reduce failure of any project. The Agile model of SDLC is suitable for developing any software. It begins with feasibility study, design phase, implementation, testing followed by maintenance. The users will be allowed to participate in this process so that there is less chance of failure.  Another expectation is to satisfy the customers. The company must know its customers and meet their needs by providing correct IT solutions. The company expects to develop a proper IT infrastructure that will be efficient and it will not lead to operational failure. The CEO expects the company to follow the strategic plan developed by him in an effective manner (Rainer et al. 2015). The CIO is the head of the IT department expects that the IT project will be carried out with no failure. CFO and CIO expects that strong security policies to be implemented in order to protect sensitive data. The CFO expects the company to follow the business plan in a proper manner so that there is no financial loss.

Business Situation

Security: IT security is given the first priority because the company contains sensitive data (Stair and Reynolds 2013). Loss of valuable data will affect the users and the reputation of the company.

Training needs: This is given second priority (Cassidy 2016). The employees need proper training in order to operate the IT systems and to remain productive with the changing work environment (Van De Walle, Turoff and Hiltz 2014).

 Financial needs: This is given the third priority. The company must be financially stable in order to remain productive.

The organization is an IT based and it provides technical support and services to their customers. The Structural representation of the organization is given in the table below,

The organizational structure includes the development of a stratified and improved functional analysis. The structure of the organization are divided into three levels are management level, executive levels, and operational level. Each of the levels includes some human resources and their combined activities would develop the support for the integration of the operations (Rainer et al. 2015). The executive level comprises of CEO, Managing Director, and Directors. The executive level would provide the decision activities and implementing the profound development. The management level includes the Production Manager, General Manager, IT Manager, and Sales Manager. The management level would comprise of managing the operations and it would result in forming the completion of the organization’s operations. The operational level includes technicians and clerks and they would realize the operations of the organization.

The IT organization would comprise of the integrating the operations and development for the integration and alignment of the operations (Peppard and Ward 2016). The various business risks for the organization are deficit in profit, lack of resources, design issues, and flaw in the operations. The risks factors can be mitigated as mentioned in the table below,

Risk	Mitigation Strategy
Deficit in Profit	Use of provisional plan for improving the operations
Lack of Resources	Contingency budget allocation
Design Issues	Use of effective design system would be allowed for the development of the system
Flaw in the Operations	Align of the operations in the integrated time duration

There are several information technology challenges or risks that are usually faced in any organization. The main challenges or risks are as follows:

1. i) New Technology: This is the most important challenge or risk in any organization. Technology is the most important advancement in the modern world and it helps in all aspects (Goetsch and Davis 2014). However, in spite of being the biggest boon, technology even has several and various risks or challenges incorporated within it. This technology becomes more risky when it is new in an organization.
2. ii)  Cloud: Cloud is the best technology for transferring any data or information from any part of the world. However, there are few in built risks or challenges in the security system of a cloud. While transferring the information, there is a high chance that the information will be los or the information system will be corrupted forever.

iii) Nefarious Activities: These are the most dangerous types of risks or challenges in information technology in any organization. These types of activities mostly occur when an intruder or hacker has wrong intentions (Laudon and Laudon 2015). He wants to intrude into a system and this causes to lose the information and data forever. The basic examples of nefarious activities are virus, malware, malicious activities and many more.

However, the above mentioned IT challenges and risks can be reduced or mitigated by certain approaches or steps. They are as follows:

1. i) Keeping Systems Updated: This is the most basic step for mitigation of information technology risks or challenges. The systems, which are utilized in the organization should be up to dated (Hilpert, Kranz and Schumann 2014). The reason for failure is the lack of patching.
2. ii) Limited Access to Systems: The systems should be allowed to authenticated users only and thus this limited access to systems prevent any type of challenge or risk in information technology.

Business Needs

The above mentioned approaches are helpful in mitigating the IT risks and challenges.

The information technology has several processes within it (Alhawar et al. 2012). The main processes of information technology are as follows:

1. i) Risk Management Implementation
2. ii) Operational IT Process Implementation

iii) Integration Planning and Initiation

1. iv) Quality Assurance
2. v) Execution of Processes

The information technology of the mentioned organization is cloud. It is based a cloud based infrastructure. Cloud is the best technology for transferring any data or information from any part of the world.

The IT operations are managed by the process of service monitoring in this company (Alur, Henzinger  and Vardi 2015).  This service monitoring makes sure that plan of service management is perfect.

Enterprise architecture is the practice for conducting the planning, design, analysis and implementation of a particular enterprise with the help of a comprehensive approach. This type of enterprise architecture is directly connected to an information system.

Budget and spending plays the most important role in any organization (Buede and Miller 2016). When this organization is starting or initiating its new project. The annual budget of the IT department of this particular organization is around 1 million dollars. Best effort means that the difficulty in getting budget information is acknowledged.

Conclusion

Therefore, from the above discussion it can be concluded that, in this era of emerging technology, the organizations are completely dependent on advanced technologies. They develop strategies for implementing and using information technology in the organization. IT strategy is a well developed plan that is used by the IT professionals of an organization. IT strategy covers the information regarding technology management, cost management, software as well as hardware management. It also includes risk management plan and risk mitigation strategies that are involved in dealing with IT management. Development and execution of IT strategy needs strong leadership. The chief information officer plays an important role in this process. The above report discusses about the roles and responsibilities of the main stakeholders in the organization like CEO, CFO, CIO, CCO and external customers. The top five concerns of these stakeholders are also discussed. The business situation, needs and priorities are also discussed in details. This report also gives a brief idea regarding the organizational structure as well as its capabilities. This report also discusses about the business challenges as well as IT risks that are involved in an organization. This report gives a brief idea about the budget of that will be required by the IT department. The discussions are done on the basis of proper justifications.

References

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