Google Strategic Information Technology Plan

Successful companies often adopt innovative plans that are instrumental in the realization of their objectives. In particular, information technology organizations need to keep up to date with the ubiquitous technological advancements owing to stiff competition in the market. Therefore, innovation in this field is imperative towards the success of firms in such fields, for instance, Google. Google is an American IT company which deals collects and retrieves information from several websites globally. An evaluation of its information technology plan fosters an understanding of the company’s strategic plan on innovation that sustains its success and relevance in the industry.

Strategic Information Technology Plan – Google

Executive Summary

Considering that technology changes rapidly, most technological companies often encounter difficulties when attempting to adapt to the latest advancements. However, only innovative institutions succeed in their business operations due to stiff competition. Google is a successful IT company based in the United States. The company’s success is attributed to its innovative activities regarding technological advancements. An evaluation of its strategic information technology plan reveals various important areas for consideration to understand its success factors. For instance, it identifies the company’s core long- and short-term business goals. Besides, the plan delineates the concept of IT strategy that supports these goals. Additionally, assessment of management and technology information capabilities of Google reveals its competitors and the way the company collects information and generates innovative ideas. Moreover, an evaluation of Google’s sustainability, stakeholders, and their duties provides an insight into its environmental impact and corporate social responsibility. The strategic plan also covers the company’s evaluation using McGrath and MacMillan’s twelve factors and a balanced scorecard analysis. Finally, the strategic plan identifies Google’s plans for technology mergers and acquisitions. A process model evaluation for technology innovation depicts the company’s current position, risk assessment, and decision analysis.

Introduction

Google is the most successful technological company owing to the diversity of services that it offers. Although the firm is headquartered at California in the United States, it provides its services worldwide. The firm incorporates various information systems that facilitate communication by offering innovative information technology services to its users. Considering that the company offers timely solutions to most problems in the information technology sphere, Google has grown to become the most popular IT company globally. It focuses on computer hardware, software, and the Internet services. Notably, a large proportion of the world population uses the services delivered by Google. For instance, most people use Google’s Android-powered smartphones for telecommunication purposes, YouTube as an online site for watching and streaming videos, and Gmail for electronic mail services. Therefore, the concept of innovativeness has been the driving force of Google’s prosperity in the information technology strategy, which has fostered its excellence in the services and products it renders.

Google primarily delivers services in the search engine industry, whereby it specializes in the provision of real-time data and answers to billions of questions. For example, the organization has such products as Google Play Store, Google Drive, Google maps, Gmail, and Google Plus. These services help the company to control most activities that occur online. As a result, the firm holds more than 70% of the market share in the IT industry (Sutherland, 2012). Consequently, Google has overshadowed other companies offering similar services.

Google’s mission is ascribed to organizing global information while focusing on its accessibility and usefulness to the majority of the world population. Moreover, the organization’s vision statement is to deliver information to its users in a timely fashion with precision. The company also aims to foster convenience in the search for information by individuals from diverse fields. The IT company has databases with indices of numerous websites, which enhances access to a wealth of information worldwide.

The aspects of innovativeness and openness are the major drivers of Google’s successful management of technology and innovation. The company hires highly-skilled employees and creates a conducive working environment for this purpose. Moreover, the company allows flexibility amongst its workers, whereby they are encouraged to explore new ideas in line with their interests as characterized by its talent management system (Sutherland, 2012). The current state of Google’s management of technology and innovation positions it above its competitors due to its dynamism in innovativeness and technology adoption. In the future, the company is likely to continue these trends in the adoption of research activities and service delivery.

Key Business Goals

The mission of Google elaborates the organization’s key business goals in the information technology industry. According to Sutherland (2012), the firm has four primary business objectives. Primarily, it aims to gather more information and personal data in a bid to facilitate the expansion of the scope of its services. Secondly, the company strives to integrate its proprietary algorithms and enhance their effectiveness towards the delivery of accurate results within a very short time. This goal will also ensure the efficiency of the services that the company offers to its users. Additionally, Google seeks to adopt and advance the level of artificial intelligence software that studies the needs and preferences of its users to offer them relevant data and information. As a result, it processes and organizes results in accordance with the users’ needs to enhance the usefulness of the website. Finally, Google focuses on generating more revenue through increasing the satisfaction of the clientele with its services.

IT Strategy to Support Goals of the Organization

Service

The adoption of AdWords and AdSense has enhanced the marketing services of Google on its webpage. In this case, the former displays search results to the user and appears on the side of the page as well as on Google Maps and Gmail. As a part of its IT strategy, the company ought to improve the appearance of AdWords by incorporating it into several websites, thereby increasing its marketing coverage. Therefore, AdSense was designed to promote advertisements that are attributed to search results and content present on various websites including blogs. As a result, both AdWords and AdSense are imperative in generating a significant portion of Google’s revenue through online marketing and advertising. The company should also design techniques of offline advertisements to maximize its income.

Considering that ubiquitous advancements in technology are promoting the use of mobile handsets compared to the computer, most Internet users are similarly embracing mobile phones, particularly smartphones, to do many computer-related activities. In this case, functions such as banking services, which were predominantly performed using computers, are now supported by these gadgets (Sutherland, 2012). Therefore, Google is obligated to enhance AdWords services by developing a mobile location extension, which would enable the users to incorporate their business addresses and locations to the marketing services. Since most users will comfortably access relevant information regarding their interests without the need to switch tabs or pages, the strategy is set to increase the profits realized by the company by a great margin. Moreover, the IT company needs to include map extensions and call tabs to enhance user experience when accessing the website. As a result, this strategy will foster convenience, especially for people who engage in business relationships as well as those who use Google services for social reasons.

Innovation

The concept of innovation as an IT strategy is important in an organization since it enhances the achievement of its predetermined objectives. In the case of Google, it is significant in ensuring the realization of the company’s mission. According to the company policy, about 20% of the staff’s time is devoted to research activities that involve their fundamental business roles and 10% of their time take activities which are irrelevant to these roles (Sutherland, 2012). The company has also devised labs to create value for its employees as these labs equip them with updated IT information that is instrumental in promoting innovations. Additionally, they facilitate feedback retrieval from various users, which enhances the creation of value in the organization.

Security

Security is another important facet in the information technology strategy to support the objectives of Google. The success of an online company is usually attributed to its security measures. In this respect, ensuring the security of the company and its users is among the top priorities of the firm’s business operations. Considering that hacking and related activities are on the rise, the protection of the company’s databases is an integral part of its activities that always receives special attention.

Google needs to adopt various security strategies to foster the protection of its users’ data and the firm’s confidential information. For example, it ought to improve its assessment of internal traffic by advancing its security monitoring tools. In this case, the firm can create a taskforce to inspect suspicious occurrences using sophisticated traffic monitoring and capturing equipment. Moreover, public data repositories should be incorporated with search alerts to foster identification of malware attacks on the software components of the organization. The company should also adopt a frequent network analysis to investigate any threats or unusual occurrences within the entire system. These processes are instrumental in ensuring security of user data and confidential information of the company.

IT Foundation

The rapid evolution of technology in the contemporary society, particularly the rise of the Internet of Things (IoT), which is adopted by many institutions, has resulted in the effective management of business activities in various companies. Similarly, Google embarks on formulating concrete deliberations aimed at investing in the IoT. In this case, robotics is important in enhancing the efficient management of various processes and improving the lives of human beings.

Besides, there is an enormous potential of the IoT penetration in the near future caused by increased revenue due to the utilization of robotics in fulfilling diverse duties. The IT company can thus focus on using the IoT to manage and analyze data. As a result, Google can increase its marketing activities since adopting the Internet of Things will facilitate customization of certain advertisements depending on the target audience as well as regional location.

Assessment of Management Technology Innovation (MTI) Capabilities

Competitors

There are several companies offering services similar to Google, which results in competition in the information technology industry. In particular, Google faces competition from Microsoft as it provides similar search engine services using its Bing. Although Bing has more attractive features on its interface, Google still has higher success rates considering and a more widespread customer base compared to Bing. Nevertheless, both companies experience stiff competition in the dimension of cloud computing.

Yahoo is another competitor of Google in the aspects of email and the search engine. Despite being a strong competitor, the company is gradually declining and losing its market share to Google. Other competitors in this facet include AOL, which has diminished due to its inability to embrace techniques that conform to technological advancements.

Moreover, in the dimension of news, Google faces competition from Facebook and Twitter. These two social sites have more users who are interested in news as compared to Google. However, both Google and Facebook are fierce competitors for online videos since most individuals resort to Google’s YouTube in search for videos, whereas these videos are automatically displayed on the Facebook’s webpage.

In the field of marketing and online advertising, Alibaba and Amazon are the primary competitors of Google. In addition, Google’s smartphone operating system faces competition from others such as Microsoft’s Windows and Apple’s iOS. Nevertheless, Google is successful as a result of its diversification in investment opportunities and dynamism in innovation.

Information Technology Research and Development (R&D)

In a bid to realize its mission and vision, Google has an information technology research and development system, through which it collects information by various methods. For instance, tracking of the IP address and cookies has been very instrumental to Google. In this case, the organization marks addresses from its users’ accounts when are logged in and cookies are important in tracking data and information.

There are various research facilities used by Google in collecting information including Google Search trackers, the web crawler, AdSense and AdWords tools. Trackers use cookies to track data on all searches, whereas a web crawler indexes several websites. Additionally, AdSense and AdWords are imperative in enhancing marketing and advertising on the webpage by collecting relevant information on customers and marketers (Sutherland, 2012). Other facilities through which Google collects data involve Gmail, YouTube, and Google Maps, whereby the organization monitors email communication, video-viewing habits, and regional preferences respectively.

Employee Innovative Idea Capture Processes

There are various ways by which Google gets innovative ideas and suggestions from its staff such as its cultural norms of innovativeness and openness. In this respect, the workers are given the privilege of delivering emails with their brilliant ideas directly to the organization’s management. The company policy also allows workers to have an open day weekly to enable them to focus on their areas of interests and devise innovative projects and ideas. Besides, Google regularly organizes workshops, seminars, and meeting sessions, whereby the employees’ skills are enhanced (Sutherland, 2012). These functions also provide a platform for meaningful discussions where staff members contribute their ideas to the management body.

Strategy and Processes Supporting Internal Innovations of Entrepreneurs

Google’s innovative culture has various strategies and processes which promote internal innovations of entrepreneurs, including openness in innovation sources and dedicating more time to the staff. In this case, the culture of being open to all sources depicts that innovation comes from employers, employees, and the clients regardless of any limiting factors. Therefore, this strategy supports internal innovation of entrepreneurs by being open to any source of positive ideas.

Additionally, dedicating more time to the staff is an important way of supporting internal innovation of entrepreneurs. Considering that allocation of time for employees enables the exchange of ideas and innovations, it instills in them critical thinking skills and potential triggers to the generation of feasible innovations. Consequently, this strategy supports the internal innovations of entrepreneurs.

Assessing Sustainability, Stakeholder Responsibility and Technology Innovation

Environmental Impact

Google exerts impact on various environmental resources including air, water, ground, and waste emissions. This is reflected in their values and business processes in the following ways. First, since the deprival of natural resources is mainly fostered by the need of energy consumption, the organization resolved to use renewable energy. Hence, the company has reduced the negative environmental impact on the air, water, and land by decreasing the emission of carbon dioxide to the environment. Second, Google Inc. helps millions of organizations to preserve the environment through Google Cloud, which reduces their energy consumption by up to 87 percent, thereby preserving natural resources. Third, Google has been a global advocate of environment conservation. The company has invested about $2.5 billion on solar and wind energy projects. Fourth, Google embarked on a project aimed at achieving zero waste to landfill by seeking innovative ways to reduce waste. This effort has highly facilitated conservation of land as a natural resource (Google, 2017).

Evidence of Economic Success and Stakeholder Responsibility

Since its inception in 1998, the company has been gradually experiencing economic success. Initially, when the company was established, it was funded by Ram Shriram, David Cheriton, Jeff Bezos, and Andy Bechtolsheim. The major investors of the company provided funds for running the firm, after which its market capitalization grew remarkably. In this case, Google sold over 19.5 million shares, each at a cost of $85. The company has grown considerably since then, and currently, it is worth over $530 billion. The responsibility of the stakeholders was imperative in enhancing the growth of the organization.

Social (Code of Conducts and Corporate Social Responsibility)

Google’s code of conduct revolves around the principle that one should not be evil. Thus, the code stipulates that all individuals partnering with Google should always observe the highest possible standards of business ethics. In this case, one should always do the right thing and avoid wrongdoings in practice. Some virtues that employees are required to exhibit include integrity, usefulness, responsiveness, and preservation of privacy and security of all confidential matters within the organization.

Evaluation of the Company Stakeholder Responsibility and the Bottom Line

The stakeholders of Google have various responsibilities regarding the determination of the company’s financial implications. In this case, they have a stake in the organization and offer financial support to the company in case of financial constraints. Therefore, they control a significant portion of the firm’s financial relations.

McGrath and MacMillan’s Twelve Factors Evaluation

The contemporary business environment is full of uncertainties and, thus, it is important for a company to adopt entrepreneurial techniques for successful planning. In this case, McGrath and MacMillan’s twelve factors are significant in evaluating Google’s planning process for innovation. Six of these factors have been described below.

Factor 1

One of the McGrath and MacMillan’s factors is the demand for a product. In this case, the demand for Google’s products and services globally has been an important aspect of success of the organization regarding its performance in the market. Most of these products and services identified above are utilized worldwide and have thus resulted in increased demand. Consequently, this demand has made the firm to devote more attention to improving its infrastructure and enhancing its products and services. As a result, Google has expanded its business operations, thus fostering the growth of the company. Furthermore, the IT company is set to experience further growth owing to the trends in innovation and the increasing demand for its products.

Factor 2

Factors that increase adoption rates comprise another McGrath and MacMillan’s factor which contributes to the growth of the firm. In the case of Google, its products and services are frequently used worldwide due to its broad customer base. The implication is that they have high adoption rates in the market compared to the products and services of their competitors. Therefore, this aspect creates a relative advantage of Google in relation to similar companies. Additionally, since its products are considered to have premium features, many people embrace them instead of other products, hence their high adoption rate. As a result, this relative advantage has facilitated the company to offer excellent services and products in a bid to satisfy the clients, thereby contributing to the growth of the company.

Factor 3

Another factor that enhances the success of the organization is associated with a sustainable competitive advantage in the market. Google has sophisticated infrastructural equipment, an excellent workforce, and loyal customer base; therefore, the company has a competitive advantage over its rivals. Moreover, as the company taps into new business environments, Google grows remarkably and advances its equipment as well. The implication is that the organization promotes the setting of standards in the firm, whereby the workers are motivated to increase their performance and productivity, which results in the development of quality products and services. Therefore, the company is viewed to increase its revenue and expansion due to its competitive advantage.

Factor 4

Google’s success can also be attributed to the commercialization of its products, whereby the company often introduces new products to the market. Since the research and development team at Google is dedicated to the establishment of the needs of the company’s customers, innovation is a salient feature in the institution as it results in the development of new products that address these needs. Therefore, commercialization and diversification of the organization’s products and services result in increased revenue for Google and thus its growth. Since the world is dynamic and continues changing and innovativeness of workers at Google is improving, the company will grow in the future.

Factor 5

The level of novelty of innovation comprises another factor that supports the growth of Google. Since the firm aims to meet the common needs and requirements of its users, it also focuses on increasing its efficiency by ensuring that the search results are conveyed within the shortest time possible to achieve their usefulness for users. This aspect of innovation is incorporated with the concepts of improving the usefulness and efficiency of the company’s products and services; therefore, the level of novelty of the innovation promotes the growth of Google. As a result, the organization will experience further growth in the future due to a high level of novelty of the innovation.

Factor 6

The ability of Google to create standards is an important McGrath and MacMillan’s factor that is imperative in ensuring the growth and expansion of the firm. Since the company strives to provide high-quality products and services in the market, it attracts more clients globally compared with its competitors. As a result, other organizations are compelled to develop their products and services to conform to those of Google’s in a bid to maintain relevance in the market. In this way, Google creates standards for other companies, thereby winning the confidence of its clients and achieving grows in revenue.

McFarlan and McKenney Strategic Grid Planning Process

Google has been successful in the information technology industry due to the effectiveness of its innovation strategies and its relevance in the market considering that the company’s primary goal is to satisfy the needs of its clients. The firm accomplishes this task by ensuring that users can access the necessary information timely and with precision. The McFarlan and McKenney strategic grid planning process demonstrates the relationship between an organization’s information technology strategy, its business strategy, and its business operations. The model evaluates the impacts of the current and future IT applications through four quadrants, each depicting a possible role for IT in the company. These quadrants include the aspects of support, factory, and turnaround, and strategic aspects.

The support quadrant analyzes applications that improve the management and performance of an organization but do not affect the business. The turnaround section identifies applications that may be of future strategic importance, whereas the factory one delineates those that are critical for sustaining the existing business. Finally, the strategic quadrant illustrates applications that are vital for future success.

In the case of Google, the fourth quadrant, which depicts the company’s strategic innovation, is fundamental for the organization as well as other firms. For the majority of business operations undertaken by various companies, the use of information technology is essential in facilitating communication between two or more parties. For instance, Gmail is widely used for both business and personal purposes to foster communication (Sutherland, 2012). Since email is the principal communication channel for various companies globally, Google has an opportunity in this market considering that its innovative features are imperative in addressing the requirements of its clients. Google’s objective to develop self-driving vehicles is viewed as a strategic move towards ensuring road safety and aiding the physically disadvantaged in society. Therefore, Google will retain its relevance and position in the future through its strategic plans of diversification.

Balanced Scorecard Analysis

Balanced scorecard analysis is a technique that is used to gauge the performance of a business using four metrics, including sustainability, customers, financial result, and human resources. Bryson (2017) asserts that a balanced scorecard is a significant tool of company analysis that enables an organization to devise a strategic plan. The following section analyzes the internal performance of Google based on this analysis to enhance the development of a strategic plan for the company.

Financial Results

In the financial aspect of the balanced scorecard analysis, a critical success factor is increasing the profits and the revenue simultaneously. This factor contributes to the firm’s progressive growth, expansion, and creates wide markets for its products and services. The rationale is to appease the shareholders considering that they contributed generously to Google’s investment capital. Debt-to-ratio, price-to-earnings ratio, price-to-sales ratio, revenue growth, and operating margins constitute the key performance indicators for the organization’s achievement of its financial objectives. They determine whether Google is generating revenue and profits in its business undertakings. The person responsible for ensuring that the financial objectives are realized is the vice president of finance.

Customers

The most significant facet in business relationships constitutes the customers since they determine the success of the company. In Google’s case, the critical success factor entails increasing the number of its clientele, which can be achieved by enhancing the surfing experience and embracing strategies of increasing the daily searches. The critical success factor’s rationale revolves around ensuring clients’ good perception of the organization. The client retention capacities are the key performance indicator in this case. The individual who is responsible for ensuring that these objectives are met is the customer relations vice president.

Human Resources

Google’s hiring of highly-skilled personnel has also significantly contributed to the success of the company. It is important to note that there is a well-structured technique for hiring new staff in the organization. Enhancing the human resource management is a critical success factor in this case. Therefore, attracting talented people to the firm constitutes the rationale for the success factor. As a result, the length of a worker’s employment period, the time necessary for recruitment, staff turnover rate, cost of training and development, and employee satisfaction are the key indicators. In Google’s case, the person responsible for overseeing the realization of the company’s goals is the vice president of the human resource management department.

Sustainability

Sustainability is the final aspect of the balanced scorecard, and it illustrates that a firm requires sustainable operations as well as an innovative team. Enhancing the search databases and increasing the response time are critical sustainability success factors. The rationale entails the creation and maintenance of a conducive business environment for innovation. Applying the global reporting initiative framework constitutes the primary performance indicator, and this aspect of sustainability is under the supervision of the operations vice president.

Table 1. Balanced Score Card Elements

For-Profit Organization	Financial Results	Customers	Human Resources	Sustainability
Critical Success Factor	Increase net profit and revenue	Increase customer base	Improve human resource management	1. Enhance search database; 2. Increase response time
Rationale	Amusing shareholders	Enhance client perception	Attract more talented staff	Creating an environment for supporting change
Key Performance Indicator	1. Debt-to-equity ratio; 2. price-to-earnings ratio; 3. price-to-sales ratio; 4. revenue growth 5. operating margins	User retention capacity	1. Employee satisfaction; 2. Cost of training; 3. Employee turnover rate	Global reporting initiative framework
Who is Responsible	Finance vice president	Client relations vice president	Human resource management vice president	Operations vice president

Plans for Technology Merger or Acquisition

Google has been laboring to enhance the quality of its products and services with the aim of increasing their availability to a maximized number of individuals globally. For this reason, the IT company has partnered with various companies and acquired several start-up firms. For instance, Google decided to partner with HTC, whereby some of the engineers of the latter company will work with Google’s team to foster the development of economically feasible high-quality gadgets. Besides, this move to partner with HTC has been inspired by competition from other companies in the market. The entity formed as a result of the partnership will be tasked with enhancing components such as the pixel smartphone. It will design and make gadgets which will be released into the market for competition with their rivals.

Google has a plan regarding mergers and acquisitions that requires following certain procedures. There are various factors that affect the process such as the cultural environment of the teams, the organizational structure, human resources, climate, and business. In this case, Google should consider HTC’s human resources requirements and its cultural environment as these two factors have a significant impact on the realization of the predetermined set of objectives as discussed below.

Human Resource Requirements

The consideration of the human resources requirements prior to a merger is important as it may affect the overall performance of the team and the achievements of the set goals. Considering that Google hires highly-skilled personnel, the company does not compromise on the quality of work that is to be done, hence the performance. Therefore, there are various concerns that are necessary in aiding Google in the context of human resources requirements. For instance, (1) it is imperative that the team of engineers from HTC be engaged in a rigorous assessment of their technical expertise to determine the level of skills of these individuals. Besides, (2) Google ought to perform reviews, particularly on the legal position of HTC regarding employee policies such as healthcare benefits. These reviews are important for avoiding potential litigations towards the firm. Additionally, (3) Google should consult with the human resources management department of HTC on the remuneration packages to be offered to engineers. This requirement is important as the company needs to consider the skills of workers in conjunction with their paychecks. (4) Moreover, Google ought to consider the tools and equipment that are required by the engineers for the delivery of their services. The need to consider software and hardware requirements of the staff is important in the achievement of the company’s goals (Bryson, 2017). (5) The IT company should also address any concerns regarding the safety of engineers form HTC. All security needs should be met as they work for Google. (6) Communication aspects of the workers should be addressed since it is important in ensuring an effective workforce. In this case, a clear organizational structure should be formulated to improve communication challenges. (7) Google should also set goals for engineers regarding their performance. This step will maximize the company’s output upon their acquisition. (8) Moreover, Google ought to motivate engineers by providing benefits such as bonuses and promotions for those exhibiting outstanding performance in their work. Therefore, Google should only proceed with the acquisition process if these conditions concerning the human resource requirements are met.

Cultural Environment

The cultural environment of a company is also significant and should be taken into consideration before any merger or acquisition. In this case, (1) Google ought to investigate the organizational strength of HTC and establish its cultural dynamics. This step will enable the management of Google to comprehend the system of operations undertaken by the other firm and address any potential issue regarding the talent and motivation of engineers (Bryson, 2017). Additionally, (2) Google can identify some characteristics of HTC’s stakeholders and appreciate how they handle some workers’ concerns in order to understand the team better. Moreover, (3) the company can offer training sessions for new engineers to ensure that they blend with the operational procedures used by Google. This aspect will facilitate easy adoption of the culture at Google. Besides, (4) reviewing the code of conduct of HTC in relation to that of Google will enable the management team to identify key aspects of the code that should be addressed for smooth employee-employer relationships. (5) The engineers should also be enlightened on social habits of the workforce at Google to ensure effective interactivity and integration into the system. Additionally, (6) Google ought to address engineers’ concerns regarding the company goals. In this case, the targets of the company and the necessary steps towards their realization should be effectively communicated. (7) Concerning the values of the company, Google should ensure that engineers are in a position to adopt their values and employ them in their undertakings. Furthermore, (8) Google management ought to investigate the working standards of engineers, especially their dedication to their respective duties and their relationships with other workers. These aspects regarding the cultural environment are important and should be considered before engaging in the acquisition.

Process Model Evaluation for Technology Innovation

The current innovation direction of Google is focused on transforming the business world with their Google Cloud Platform. This aim is in line with the organization’s commitment to improve the lives of everyone. The platform includes a wide range of services such as storage, networking, machine learning, big data, and the Internet of things. The core products imbedded in the system are discussed below.

• Google Compute Engine presents users with features such as virtual machine instances for workload hosting of business enterprises. It operates as an Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS).
• Google App Engine offers software developers access to the organization’s Scalable hosting. In this regard, programmers can develop systems that run on the App Engine using a software development kit (SDK).
• Google Could Storage is a storage platform where users can store large and unstructured volumes of data. Users are presented with different database options such as NoSQL and MySQL among others.
• Google Container Engine manages docker containers within the public cloud through the orchestration system.

Innovation on the Google Cloud Platform is facilitated by consistent improvement in pricing strategies, which allows customers to do more and requires less effort. More precisely, Google offers customers friendly pricing. Thus, the prices for its services are 60% lower compared to other organizations as there are no upfront costs, customer can pay for services on a needed basis, and there are no termination fees. The company’s latest innovations include the introduction of sustained 30% user discounts on workloads every month, the per second billing, custom machine integration, preemtible VM instances, and the coldline that stores records at relatively low costs and high speed (Google Cloud Platform, n.d.).

Current Position

According to Krishnan and Gonzalez (2015), the technology portfolio of the Google Cloud Platform is consistent with the company’s business needs in three significant ways. First, most organizations are consistently seeking various ways to enhance mobility with the directive of increasing worker’s productivity through quick responses to market changes and opportunities as they occur. Cloud computing is a solution to the impending business needs as it presents a forum where corporate information can be accessed from any place and at any time. Second, the volume of data available in organizations is overwhelming and increases drastically each day. Therefore, organizations are turning to cloud computing to harness large volumes of data and promote better access to information through enhanced operational efficiency. Third, organizations spend significant costs on numerous traditional software and systems that execute various roles. The cost of their maintenance is relatively high, which reduces the overall profits for the company. The Google Cloud Platform offers a cost-efficient platform for various effective business processes. Risk Assessment

The common risk faced by the Google Cloud Platform is the experience of a downtime that could lead to significant losses for their clients. Another risk identified is facing high competition from dominant organizations such as Amazon, which are well equipped with technological features to offer efficient cloud computing services. The main threats that are associated with the platform include security and breach of the information stored on the cloud. In this respect, the key directions of stabilizing the current system are efficient due to the 24 hours monitoring and management of the cloud, continuous improvement of customers’ experience to promote competition, and enhancement of security for the cloud system. Decision Analysis

Regarding the risk assessment, there are various strategic decisions that Google can adopt for stabilizing its current system. For example, the IT company can address competition from rivals such as Amazon by investing further in cloud computing through research and innovation. In this case, Google can devise cloud computing features that are attractive and useful to its users as a strategic measure of curbing competition. Moreover, Google can also enhance its security measures on cloud computing by adopting monitoring systems that track suspicious activities on its cloud services as well as the company’s servers.

Options

The options to be considered in the shift from the current to the desired position on Google’s Cloud Platform include consumer needs, whereby the organization will work towards development of a positive relationship through customer satisfaction with the services offered. Likewise, the organization should highly invest on the research and development department to guarantee continuous innovation and improvement that will foster customer loyalty and attraction of new customers in the market. Finally, the company should hire a team of experts that will be responsible for information management, application, and network security.

Final Recommendation

Regarding the IT strategic plan described above, there are various recommendations that can be implemented to foster the success of the company in certain dimensions. For instance, in the aspect of security, Google should develop software that monitors suspicious activities, particularly in its databases which contain confidential information both for the company and the users of its products and services. This step will ensure that high-level security of these files. Additionally, Google should adopt AdWords services enhancements by developing a mobile location extension that will facilitate its users to realize easy marketing and business experiences. Finally, Google should engage the IoT in its strategic plan for business marketing considering that technological changes are geared towards the advancements of services in this field.

Conclusion

Information technology companies are often ascribed to dynamism in aspects of their strategic plans considering that technology changes rapidly. Google is a successful IT company owing to its innovations in the information technology industry. The company offers products and services in the communications sector and provides software and hardware solutions to its users. Its major business goals include gathering more data for its expansion, the delivery of timely results to its users, and the adoption of the latest technology to provide information according to the needs and preferences of its users. Google’s IT strategy that is based on the aspects of service, innovation, security, and IT foundation as discussed. According to the market assessment of the company’s performance, Microsoft, Yahoo, Amazon, and Facebook are its major competitors. Moreover, Google has systematic means of collecting data as well as innovative strategies. An assessment of the company’s stakeholder responsibility and technology innovation reveals its impact on the environment as well as its code of conduct. Various evaluations of the company’s innovation such as McGrath and MacMillan’s twelve factors and the McFarlan and McKenney strategic grid planning process depict factors that promote its success regarding strategic innovation. Additionally, Google’s balanced scorecard analysis gives an insight into its financial, customer, human resources, and sustainability aspects. As evaluated, the plans for technology merger and acquisition for the company identify its position on sourcing engineers from HTC for innovation and advancement in the production of technological gadgets. Furthermore, Google’s process model evaluation for technology innovation delineates the firm’s current position on technology and business needs, its risk factors, and available options for feasible decisions. Recommendations on the course of action revolve around strategic security, service enhancements, and technological advancements.