IMAT5206: Critical Analysis of CIO’s Strategy, Fall 2024

Desklib provides solved assignments and past papers to help students succeed.

Management of Information Systems
IMAT5206
Critical Analysis of Chief Information Officer’s
(CIO’s) Strategy

Contents
Introduction......................................................................................................................................3
Analysis of CIO interview and identification of theme...................................................................4
Explanation of concept and definition.............................................................................................6
Critical appraisal and analysis.........................................................................................................8
Reference to stories and sets............................................................................................................9
Recommendations..........................................................................................................................10
Conclusion.....................................................................................................................................11
References......................................................................................................................................12

Introduction
The following report aims at enhancing the knowledge regarding the management information
system in any company. Hence the report focuses on studying the need and purpose of the
information system in the information technology (IT) departments and organization. The report
analysis the problems which can occur in any organization and evaluate solutions to solve the
various IT challenges and risks. The report talks about the interview conducted to one of the
Chief Information Officer Marcus East, who is the Chief Technological Officer of National
Geographic. The report discusses the strategy implemented by the Marcus East to solve various
problems and challenges faced. The report will discuss the theme and will critically evaluate the
concept. It will also define various terminologies and definition used during the analysis. The
report evidences various reference stories while discussing the IT history of the company
selected. In the report, CIO’s view is also shared with various approaches and strategies. The
report also discusses both the positive and negative aspect of the theme adopted by the
organization. In one of the section, it will address the issues and problems which were faced in
the past by the organization. At last, the report states a few recommendations and future strategy
which can be pursued by the CIO.

Analysis of CIO interview and identification of theme
The CIO (Chief Information Officer) interview selected for the report is that of Marcus East,
Chief Technological Officer at National geographic. The main theme discussed by the Chief
Technological Officer: They considered three main blocks for the technology as they were
consistent in being radical as well as innovative. With the advancement in technology, National
Geographic’s Media Company is working on transforming and increasing the digital changes
with the help of serverless approaches and open source.
Marcus East, in 2017 is hired as the Chief Technological Officer (CTO) to increase their online
interaction with the customer and make modernization to engage with people in the most
possible way they could. During the interview conducted Marcus shared the overall view why
the national geographic considered as the radical and innovative organization.
East states that the consumers are the one who wanted to be part of the exploration and hence the
company started a program focusing on three pillars. Building a new platform where they can
interact with consumers more frequently, Bringing and redesigning the digital transformation and
focusing on developing products for consumers to engage them in their interest area of
exploration. The reason for bringing this change is because the customer wants the new
approaches and techniques.
New technology adopted in National Geographic
Serverless Architecture – Company adopted its first cloud approach with the partnership with
21st Century FOX. National Geographic implemented the program Cohesive Intelligent Platform
(CHIP) in which serverless architecture is designed and implemented. The organization
partnered with Amazon Web Server to migrate traditional datacenter on a public cloud. This
approach helped the organization to work cost-effectively. East mentioned that by just making an
application without actually investing money on the infrastructure, it will help them to freely
move around the countries.
Adopting Open Source - It is considered as one of the greatest transformations occurred within
the organization. The adoption of Drupal as a core open-source platform is expected to bring

efficiency and cost-effectively enhance the IT sector. A single source of the management system
will bring flexibility and skills by integrating media.
Mobile-first approach – Company is trying to make and take the route of digital support where
it’s content will be present in digital form. To start with the company started redesigning of the
website with a mobile-first approach. The company also used tools like the Net Promoter Score
to examine the online engagement activity of the customer. It has even launched new website
NationalGeographic.com
AI and Augmented Reality - The new website launched as features of artificial intelligence
which will help to record the preference of customers and provide the bespoke experience of
content usage online.
History of IT sector of National Geographic.
With 130 years of experience, National geographic is the oldest brand mainly recognized for
storytelling and exploring the planet and science. It first issued its magazine in the year 1888.
During the early 1900s, when the company introduced photography for the first time in their
magazines it is considered as the innovative approach to interacting with the customer. During
the past, it focused on enhancing the mobile experience. In the past National geographic used
more than ten bespoke systems like Adobe AEM, WordPress and Drupal. Before the redesigning
of the website company conducted various tests and surveys to take feedback from the
consumers regarding design, navigation, and structure. National Geographic is. In 2017, Marcus
East has been hired as the CTO to maintain the digital as well as technical product and prepare
the National Geographic for the digital era. Many future projects to increase and enhance online
strategy also include improving the segment of photography. Moreover, they also launched a
premium membership which is one of the initiatives to interact with their customers. As of today,
the National Geographic has acquired the number one position of chasing the capability of
technology and gained more than 350 million followers on social media, which account for 6
billion interactions with the customer.

Explanation of concept and definition
Definition of the technology adopted by the National Geographic:
Servers less architecture is one of the methods by which applications can be run without
maintaining the server or infrastructure. It helps organization (Josep, et.al, 2010) and companies
to focus and emphasis on their core functionality. The serverless technology helps in reducing
the cost of operation and help to reduce the development time also. Examples of the service
provider of serverless architecture are Amazon, Microsoft, and Google. It is like hiring the third
party to manage the activities which are done by server-side. They are also known with the name
as Backend as a Service (BaaS). It also allows the possibility where the application is developed
by the developer but managed by the cloud party, where it will be known as Function as a
Service. The one drawback which is (Colborne, 2017) faced by the serverless architecture is it is
accessed only after API gateway is set. Servers less architecture helps in setting the environment
very easily and helps in reducing the cost.
Drupal which is used as an open-source platform by the National Geographic is the platform
available for free for managing content. It is basically written in the PHP language. Drupal
enables to manage and create a mobile application, website, and social experience. It helps to
increase the digital experience of web content. Drupal has the ability to deliver the creation of
web sites in real-time avoiding delays and bottlenecks. Drupal (Yan, yet.al, 2016) provides a
secure and scalable platform for the customer offering capitalization in the business. It is
released by the GNU public license. Drupal provides flexibility, accountability, cost, and
security. Moreover Drupal does not cost anything as it is free for download and can easily be
extended and modified. Drupal helps to give a user interface which helps to build and publish
content on the digital platform. Drupal allows the developer to give notification every time when
new updates are available. Drupal has a basic theme of “look and feel”.
Artificial Intelligence is the greatest innovation of all time where the machine tries to carry out
the task as per the human intelligence. It is more commonly known with the shorthand name AI.
It performs task like reasoning, learning, correcting, etc. Some of the application areas of AI
include speech and image recognition, expert system, etc. It (Barfield, 2015) inhibits the

capability of learning from the data given and exhibits that data by applying those learning to
perform the specific task and achieve goals. Some of the examples of AI is machine learning,
automation, robotics and Natural Language Processing (NLP). AI has many applications in the
field of healthcare, business, education, manufacturing, finance, and law.
Augmented Reality is the technology which helps to improve and enhance the basic thing like
hearing, watching, etc. It helps to bring the elements of virtual reality into the real world. The
basic working principle of augmented reality is that it makes use of the environment around it to
add the data and information and create a new environment which is artificially present. There
are basically four types of AR present which are markerless, marker-based, superimposition and
projection-based AR. It basically creates a direct view by (Li and Du, 2017) adding elements like
sound, images, and graphics, etc. AR has many applications in the field of gaming, military,
tourism, broadcasting, medicine, and education. The main components of AR are S.L.A.M,
cameras, projection, reflection, sensors, processor, and depth tracking tools. With the help of AR
surrounding become more digitally attractive and enhance the experience of the user. AR is
considered successful if they achiever the real world by superimposing computer graphics
images.
Mobile-first approach – It is a strategy which is used to create the application and the website.
It focuses on two main topics first it helps to create a web application which can fit into the
screen of different devices of various sizes. It also (Russell and Norvig, 2016) includes the
feature of progressive Advancement which means that it is first created for the lower browser
and then implemented for the advanced version. One of the features which say Graceful
degradation include designing the web site by creating all the features of the advanced version
and then cutting the features to make compatible for the use in mobile devices.

Critical appraisal and analysis
The theme discussed by the East is being radical and innovative. Changes which are brought by
the Marcus for the enhancement and growth of National Geographic is remarkable. As the tech
passionate, Marcus believed that technology is the only source which will keep all their
consumers engaged in the future. With the latest trend and development, it is very necessary to
bring digital transformation in the organization. As a CTO he brought many technologies in
function, for example, serverless architecture, artificial and augmented reality, a mobile-first
approach which has brought tremendous changes boosting the social followers of National
geographic. The approach by CIO is to keep moving with the latest trend in according with the
technology to withstand in the competitive market. Bringing digital transformation is welcomed
by the customer and which help them innovating with the new technology. Hence the changes
brought by the Marcus are the best suited for the organization and there is no negative point or
impact which has seen by bringing these technologies in use. East covered every point during the
interview while keeping in mind the various problem and issues and even mentioned the use of
blockchain and other technology in future use. One of the problems discussed by Marcus is that
developing new skills with new technology is very important as new people with technological
skills are required to maintain the working of the new technology. The Marcus should have
discussed the hiring of new technological talent.

Reference to stories and sets
 East told in the interview that by introducing the mobile-first approach and tools likes Net
Promoter Score there were a great activity of customers engaging online were recorded
which justify that content displayed by National (Röst, et.al, 2016) Geographic on the
platform was welcomed by the people and expectations were raised to bring more
personalized and customized products to them.
 Content which is available in the form of an image, video, and text digitally has boasted
around 412 M from the other social platforms like Instagram, YouTube, Facebook, and
Snapchat after introducing online strategies.
 Consumers welcomed the innovation and new technology and openly welcomed the new
innovation brought to them on their door.
 East mentioned that they exactly know which skills and technology are needed for the
organization and they have senior people who are really passionate and bring that
changes and maintain high performance.

Recommendations
 Technologies will keep on evolving with time and need and therefore it is very necessary
to move with time and changes and keep innovating the new technology.
 The open-source platform used as Drupal to enhance the digital experience must be
shifted to the more feature-driven open-source platform.
 The organization can also take the use of (Billinghurst, Clark and Lee, 2015) Virtual
reality which will help to give and enhance the work and help in increasing user
experience.
 National Geographic can use the augmented reality to connect with the animation
conducted digitally.
 They must make use of the advantages provided by the Big DATA and Internet of Thing.
 Machine Learning is also one of the fields if worked on can give many advantages and
bring changes to enhance the experience.

Conclusion
Hence the report is conducted to learn about the management of information system in various
organizations. For conducting this report it critically identifies and evaluates the interview. It
analyzes the interview by Marcus East, CTO of National Geographic. While analyzing the
interview it is closely evaluated that various new technology like mobile-first approach, artificial
intelligence, augmented reality, Drupal – an open platform and also give knowledge about the
serverless architecture. East says in an interview that to interact with the customer more
frequently it is necessary to bring digital transformation in the organization. Being radical and
innovative is the building foundation of National Geographic. The report helps to identify the
theme behind the interview. It also gives a past history of National geographic in the IT
department. The report also gives full information about the new technology discussed in the
interview. It critically analyzes the interview and gives the positive and negative impact of the
technology used. Hence the report focuses on studying the need and purpose of the information
system in the information technology (IT) departments and organization

References
JoSEP, A.D., KAtz, R., KonWinSKi, A., Gunho, L.E.E., PAttERSon, D. and RABKin, A., 2010.
A view of cloud computing. Communications of the ACM, 53(4).
Yan, M., Castro, P., Cheng, P. and Ishakian, V., 2016, December. Building a chatbot with
serverless computing. In Proceedings of the 1st International Workshop on Mashups of Things
and APIs (p. 5). ACM.
Colborne, G., 2017. Simple and usable web, mobile, and interaction design. New Riders.
Russell, S.J. and Norvig, P., 2016. Artificial intelligence: a modern approach. Malaysia; Pearson
Education Limited,.
Li, D. and Du, Y., 2017. Artificial intelligence with uncertainty. CRC press.
Billinghurst, M., Clark, A. and Lee, G., 2015. A survey of augmented reality. Foundations and
Trends® in Human–Computer Interaction, 8(2-3), pp.73-272.
Barfield, W., 2015. Fundamentals of wearable computers and augmented reality. CRC Press.
Röst, H.L., Sachsenberg, T., Aiche, S., Bielow, C., Weisser, H., Aicheler, F., Andreotti, S.,
Ehrlich, H.C., Gutenbrunner, P., Kenar, E. and Liang, X., 2016. OpenMS: a flexible open-source
software platform for mass spectrometry data analysis. Nature methods, 13(9), p.741.