PhD position in Information Systems

Title: Achieving Business and IT alignment in the new Cloud Computing context: an operational approach based on coordination resources and capabilities

Description: the development of the digital economy and the accelerated increase of IT suppliers in the last few years has produced a growing offer of specialized and robust Cloud Computing Services [1]. Consequently, companies are increasingly developing and operating fewer IT services and relying more on external cloud providers to satisfy their needs. However, no cloud provider can satisfy the complete functional and technical information system requirements of a customer [2]. This occurs for several reasons, among which we can count: (i) the level of investment required to design and develop personalized services taking into account the number of customers and the diversity of their activities and needs and (ii) the level of investment required to manage personalized services during the operation considering the differences in their design and the big quantity of request for changes that can arise from the great number of customers. Thus, companies have to simultaneously contract services provided by different providers, distributed in different clouds and use them in conjunction with their internal IT services. These bring great challenges for business–IT alignment of an company in the cloud computing context [3].
Business and IT alignment is essential as it can contribute to a superior corporate performance [5]. For this reason, executives of different areas have ranked it for more than 30 years as a top priority [6]. In order to build and mantain alignment in the cloud computing context, a company should make a series of adjustments in its business and IT strategies as well as in its business processes and IT/IS implementation [4]. Neverthless, the existing approaches mainly address :

• elements related to internal Business and IT domains of an organization such as its business processes and IT/IS infraestructure components. However, considering that multiple organizations can be involved in the provision of a cloud service, coordination resources and capabilities are necessary to align these domains through several organizations;
• IS alignment at a strategic level. However, considering that today cloud services directly support the execution of business processes and in general the operation of the organization, alignment concerns in the cloud computing context also needs to be addressed at tactical and operational levels.

As a result, new models, methods and software plataforms are needed to support this new context. In this boarder, the objetive of this PhD thesis is to propose conceptual contribuitions allowing organizations to build and mantain Business and IT alignment at the operational level over time when contracting cloud services. Such contributions should consider not only the traditional internal Business and IT elements but also coordination resources and capabilities to ensure alignment through different organizations.

Advisors: Oscar Avila and Virginie Goepp
Join PhD Program between Universtity of los Andes (Colombia) & INSA Strasbourg (France)

References
[1] Zhang Q, Cheng L, Boutaba R. Cloud computing: state-of-the-art and research challenges. J Internet Serv Appl. 2010;1(1):7-18.
[2] Rohmeyer, P., & Ben-Zvi, T. Emerging trends in decision making of IT leaders. Proceedings of Portland International Center for Management of Engineering and Technology, PICMET’12, 2012, 667-671.
[3] Li, Qing, et al. “Towards the business–information technology alignment in cloud computing environment: anapproach based on collaboration points and agents.” International Journal of Computer Integrated Manufacturing 24.11 (2011): 1038-1057.
[4] Avila O, Goepp V, Kiefer F. 2009. Understanding and classifying information system alignment approaches. J Comput Inf Syst. 50:2.