Assignment for Class 6 — October 12, 1998

Read the four articles for this class in the case packet, pp. 139-186.

NOTE: You may team up with one to three other members of the class in preparing this assignment, and divide the preparation of the first three questions. All should work on the last question below, on the preparation of scenarios. If this is inconvenient, individual preparation is ok.

Put yourself in the position of a consultant to the CEO and CIO of "Megamake" a (fictitious) Fortune 1000 manufacturing firm. They are doing an IT Strategic Plan using the ITSP framework, and are interested in IT industry trends and offerings now and in the future. They have prepared the following statement and questions for you. They have read all the material and have all the frameworks used in our class to date. Come to class prepared to give them a presentation (with or without powerpoint slides or transparencies; you may refer to diagrams or pages in the readings and our course to date without projecting them).

Here at Megamake we think we are in a transition in our strategic use of IT. We were an IBM-mainframe shop exclusively in the ‘80’s, then we decentralized IT into our profit-center divisions, and now we are endeavoring to integrate a vast proliferation of PC’s, servers, and custom and packaged software.

1. What has the IT industry structure been during these three eras? What is it today? That is, what kinds of products and services were and are offered by vendors, how has it changed, and what was and is the dominant paradigm of IT firms’ combinations into vertical and horizontal integration?
   
   
2. It’s intriguing that the PC displaced the mainframe and now the internet is being called a "platform" that will displace the PC. Is this a correct interpretation of history and what is happening?
   
   
3. From our point of view at Megamake, what are the broad options currently available to us from vendors for our computing architecture and IT investment and strategy? We understand these apparently include such things as updated "client server", " network computing", "enterprise resource planning software", "integrated best of breed solutions", "electronic commerce", "knowledge management" and the like. What are the advantages and disadvantages of these or other key options for our architecture?
   
   
4. What will be the nature of the IT industry in five years, in terms of what will be the dominant paradigm or era, and the products and services within it available to us and other customer of IT vendors?

1. Prepare one "scenario" of your choice for presentation in class, and be prepared to explain and defend it. Use the terminology and methodology described in the reading from "Art of the Long View" although note that it applies to a firm doing its business environment scenarios, and you are to do scenarios for the IT industry. Some possible scenarios include the following:

2. Assuming your scenario evolves, imagine the milestones or events you would expect to see in one month, one year, and five years. Be specific; give the headline of the news article about the event.)