526 Part IV • The Information Management System
from any stage to the next requires significant colla-
boration between IT and business people at all levels
and forms the basis of trust and technology that supports
further movement.
The fact that IT architecture is tightly intertwined
with business strategy is sometimes not fully understood
until there is a major change in the business. For exam-
ple, major business restructuring initiatives, such as a
business merger, the initial outsourcing of business
processes, or new collaborations between value chain
partners, require IT architectures that can respond
quickly to changes in organizational boundaries. IT
strategies that reply on proprietary systems and local
standards rather than industry practices can impede
such business changes. In the future, service-oriented
IT architectures may mitigate some of these issues
(see the box “Service-Oriented Architecture and Cloud
Computing”).
Formulating the Strategic IS Plan
After establishing an information vision and IT architec-
ture, the information resources planning process should
generate two major plan deliverables—a strategic IS plan
and short-term operational IS plans.
Thestrategic IS plancontains a set of longer-
term objectives (often three to five years) thatrepresent measurable movement toward the infor-
mation vision and IT architecture and a set of
associated major initiatives that must be under-
taken to achieve these objectives.The aim of any strategic planning effort is to shape
the company’s resources and products so that they combine
to produce the needed results and make progress toward the
organization’s vision. In parallel with the business plan, a
strategic IS plan contains a set of long-term objectives
that define the path to be taken (or road map) to a future
state that is consistent with the information vision and IT
architecture.The Strategic IS Planning Process
The development of the IS strategic plan is accomplished
in four basic steps: setting objectives or goals, conducting
an external analysis, conducting an internal analysis, and
establishing strategic initiatives. Although they are treated
here in sequence, most planning processes involve itera-
tions through these four steps.SETTING OBJECTIVES The setting of IS objectives is
done in much the same way as strategic objectives are
specified for any business or functional organization.
Measures are identified for each of the key result areas for
the organization. IS objectives are often established in
such areas as IS department service levels, IS personnelService-Oriented Architecture and Cloud Computing
The basic idea behind service-oriented architectures(SOA) is that organizations identify “services,”
which can be data or applications, and make them available to others inside or outside of the organiza-
tion. An early example was Google making their Google Maps application available to developers who
promptly developed “mashups” (i.e., combinations of services) such as real estate data visually dis-
played on maps. While this idea originated with vendors, it is now being pursued in-house by IS depart-
ments to create services that can be easily tailored to the needs of individual business units.
Implementing SOA is a significant undertaking which enables organizations to move to the “modular”
architectural stage (stage 4 in Figure 12.5).
Cloud Computingrelies on a service-oriented architecture, since SOA identifies the application
and data elements that can be developed into specific “services.” Cloud Computing is a technology
architecture that enables an IT organization to deliver services to its users by “renting” capabilities
from others. Vendors offering cloud computing solutions include Amazon and IBM (which offer infra-
structure services) and Salesforce.com (which offers application services). Ideally, Cloud applications
can be deployed rapidly to any authorized user on any device (e.g., smartphone or desktop computer).
Updates to the application are handled by the vendor and peaks in demand can be accommodated
seamlessly. The risks with this architecture include the long-term viability of the vendor and data
security issues.