Chief Information Officer (CIO) Interview

CHIEF INFORMATION OFFICER (CIO) INTERVIEW 1
Chief Information Officer (CIO) Interview
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CHIEF INFORMATION OFFICER (CIO) INTERVIEW 2
Chief Information Officer (CIO) Interview: Martin Hofmann, Volkswagen Group
Introduction
Volkswagen group also is known as Volkswagen AG is a multinational automotive
company of manufacturing vehicles. The company was founded in the year 1937 as a car
manufacturing company (Akpinar and Vincze,, 2016, p. 55). The company is located in
Germany. It designs and manufactures commercial and passenger vehicles, engines,
motorcycles, and turbo machinery. Volkswagen group also offers services such as fleet
management, leasing as well as financing. The company is divided into two primary divisions
namely, the financial service division and the automotive division. In addition, it was rated as the
best automakers in sales in the year 2006 when it overtook the Toyota Company.
Nevertheless, the Volkswagen company maintained the title of being the best automakers
in sales in the year 2007 and 2008. The company has also maintained the largest market share in
Europe for more than two decades. The organization was also ranked seventh in the year 2018 at
the fortune global 500 lists of the world’s greatest company (Juergens and Brumlop, 2017p.90).
This paper will analyze the interview that was carried out on Volkswagen group’s Chief
Information Officer (CIO).
Themes from the CIO Interview
From the interview, the main theme that is seen relates to internet technology. The Chief
Information Officer (CIO) of the company, Mr. Martin Hofmann, said that the internet
technology experts in his company labs apply the Silicon Valley mode of work (Chmid, 2013,
p.110). The Chief Information Officer (CIO) said that his group uses the agile work style as well
as the intensive cooperation with the universities. In the company’s labs, the internet technology

CHIEF INFORMATION OFFICER (CIO) INTERVIEW 3
experts along with the technological partners of the company are working on the agile work style
but applying a strategic partnership with the software developer pivotal. The new ecosystem
which the company is working upon is supposed to bring about the new experience to the
company customers. The digital lab of the company is allocated in Berlin where the
organization's internet technology group is working on software development (Chopra, 2015,
p.157). The digital lab is also developing an external platform where the company’s external
partners can berth and join in the software development solutions. The lab is working on
different software developed programs that are bound to help in the development of the
company. The company’s lab is very useful to the company since it a room for innovation which
may tend to be better than the ones existing in the company.
Other than the company’s labs, Volkswagen group is also working on is the plan on how
to use the quantum computers to bolster the company’s digital program that is competitive with
an offer of the creation of an innovative application that is not capable of being programmed
traditionally (Ewing, 2018, p.199). The initiative of collaboration between the specialists of the
quantum known as the D-Wave and the Volkswagen labs which are in Munich and San
Francisco has an aim to build and come up with internet technology specialists at the
Volkswagen company who will tend to identify the uses of the upcoming quantum computing
within the organization (Lerbinger, 2018, p. 106). The technology of quantum computing is
meant to convey a tremendous development to the organization. As a result of the influence
brought about by internet technology, the organization requires a wide range of possibilities that
comes hand in hand with the application. the areas that dealt with autonomous driving, the
processes which support the control the artificial intelligence, intelligent mobility, and machine
learning as well. Mr. Martin Hofmann believes that one of the critical areas where quantum