SWOT Analysis Of Current ICT Service In Charles Sturt University

You are required in your new role as an Enterprise Architect (EA) to do a SWOT Analysis of a current ICT service in an organization. The default organization is Charles Sturt University, but you can substitute another known entity such as your current workplace.

SWOT is an acronym for questioning the Strength, Weakness, Opportunity, Threat and helps with the analysis needed to identify the internal (S, W) and external (O, T) positives and negatives as indicated in Fig.1. Such a process can be informative and help the Enterprise Architect (you) to identify the issues and problems, set goals develop an action plan and help strategic IT Infrastructure planning and decision-making.

You need to plan, research, and, use your initiative to express the knowledge you learnt in this subject as well as your own independent thinking and reasoning.

Your attention in this paper can be focused on any of the following topics covered in our text:

• Information Management / IT Architecture.

• Database, Data, Warehouse, and Data Mining.

• Networks, Collaboration, and Sustainability.

• CyberSecurity, Compliance, and Business Continuity.

• E-Business & E-Commerce Models and Strategies.

• Mobile Technologies and Commerce.

• Social Media.

• Enterprise Systems and Applications.

• Performance Management Using Data Visualization, Mashups, and Mobile Intelligence.

Choose a topic which you are interested in and/or which is related to your work. You should do this as early as possible. Once you have chosen a topic, read our text carefully followed by detailed research. Once this is done, you should set up a structure/a series of subtopics and decide what to write under each section (subtopic).

Strengths of Current ICT Service in Charles Sturt University

This report is about SWOT analysis of current ICT service in Charles University that is need to update or changing. Charles Sturt University is an Australian multi-campus public university and I am working here in its division of Information Technology and managing all ICT related services and activities. The current ICT service that is used in Charles Sturt University is mobile-optimized platform.

Social media is considered as a computer-mediated technologies that facilitates creation and sharing of information, career interests and other forms of expressions by using virtual communications and networks. Today social media is commonly used among people in a way that they post on site such as Twitter, Facebook and other social media sites. Social media is a big` achievement in Internet Communication and Technologies (ICT).

Social Media includes various essential features in it such as user accounts, profile pages, notifications, information updating and saving and posting.

User Accounts: Social media allows its users to create and use their own accounts for social interaction with their friends, colleagues and family members. For security purpose, social media websites allow users to set their unique login credentials.

Profile Pages: Profile pages are necessary to represent an individual that includes information about an individual user such as profile photo, bio, recent post feeds, recent activities and another essential information.

Notifications: Any site that provides notifications to its users about specific information, which sites relate to social media. The users have control on these notifications and type of notification they can choose according to their choice.

The variety of advantages of social media enhance its usage and popularity among its users. Some advantages of social media are listed as below:

1. Social media has ability to connect with other people around the world.  It is easiest way to get connect with friends and families (Lifewire, 2017).

2. It is considered an effective way for easier and quick communication from remote locations without any barrier (Odyssey, 2017).

3. Various business opportunities can be found over social media by posting business ads on social media sites and blogs.

4. Social media is also useful for providing real time news and information discovery. Live news channels and newspapers can be read through social media.  

If social media have advantages then it also consists of some disadvantages that we will discuss here:

1. The issues of privacy and security is main disadvantage of social media. Hackers try to hack social media accounts to collect users’ information (Simplilearn.com, 2017).

Weaknesses of Current ICT Service in Charles Sturt University

2. The issues of cyber bullying are commonly encountered that are conducted by posting wrong comments, images and videos of innocent people by cyber criminals to insult them. This lead to self-esteem issues and depression.

There are various people around the world those have influence of social media both in positive and negative ways. The real impacts of social media that we have analyzed from different sources of internet are listed as below (Simplilearn.com, 2017):

1. Social media has impact over politics and governance. According to research, in political campaigns use of social media has increased in last few years as compare to traditional methods of campaigning (Merriam-webster.com, 2017).

2. On commerce or business have influence of social media. It is an effective way to approach customers worldwide by business organizations. Today there are few companies who have not approached social media yet. But most of the companies have already moved towards this technology. Through social media websites, business organizations can advertise their products and services by creating their business page.

3. Social media has impact over professional development and in climbing up corporate ladder (Karadkar, 2017).

4. According to survey about social media, 21.3 % increase is found in use of social media as learning. The common tool of social media learning are LinkedIn, Facebook, Wikis and blogs (SEO Chat, 2017).

5. Another impact of social media is that it has removed all the barriers of the communication and interaction. Now it has become easier for every person to communicate at global level. Students and experts can share educational materials and ideas online and students can ask about their problems on a particular topic from anywhere by using internet. That is why social media is considered is an effective and easiest way for better and quick communication and information sharing (Beres, 2017).

6. Social Media has integrated millions of people together for achieving a specific objective. It is necessary to bring an essential change in society and social media is providing help to achieve this goal.

7. Social Media has integrated millions of people together for achieving a specific objective. It is necessary to bring an essential change in society and social media is providing help to achieve this goal.

8. For writers and bloggers, social media has also opened some opportunities, so that they can connect with their tech savvy clients and can share their articles and expertise. Further audience will share their articles and blogs in social circle. In this way writers and bloggers can get popularity for their work and can also get more work.

Opportunities of Current ICT Service in Charles Sturt University

9. Besides positive impacts of social media, there are also some negative impacts of social media. One of the negative impact of social media is that network of social media leads to addiction. If an individual spends so much time on social sites then it becomes difficult to focus on another task. It lowers the motivational level of people especially in case of students and teenagers. It is commonly seen that students are mostly rely on technology and the internet instead of learning practical knowledge.

10. The security issues of hacking, phishing and denial of service attacks etc. are also considered under negative impacts of social media. Due to this, heavy loss of personal information of social media users can occur (Smallbusiness.chron.com, 2017).

Conclusion

After this whole discussion we can say that social media has become important part of ICT. Various advanced changes are taken by social media in human life in different fields such as business, education, healthcare etc. Therefore social media must be used by IT users, but proper and security and privacy of information should be maintained. In above discussion we have discussed both negative and positive impacts of social media and it will be better for social media users to be aware about these essential concepts before start deal with social media and its applications. In this way, social media is influencing individual of every category such as student, teenager and others.

References 

Simplilearn.com. (2017). What is the real impact of social media?. Retrieved 20 April 2017, from https://www.simplilearn.com/real-impact-social-media-article 

Csu.edu.au. (2017). Home - Division of Information Technology. Retrieved 20 April 2017, from https://www.csu.edu.au/division/dit 

Lifewire. (2017). Serious Question: What Exactly Is Social Media?. Retrieved 20 April 2017, from https://www.lifewire.com/what-is-social-media-explaining-the-big-trend-3486616 

Merriam-webster.com. (2017). Definition of SOCIAL MEDIA. Retrieved 20 April 2017, from https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/social%20media 

Odyssey. (2017). Social Media’s Impact On Society. Retrieved 20 April 2017, from https://www.theodysseyonline.com/social-medias-impact-society 

Simplilearn.com. (2017). What is the real impact of social media ?. [online] Available at: https://www.simplilearn.com/real-impact-social-media-article [Accessed 25 Apr. 2017].

Smallbusiness.chron.com. (2017). The Negative Effect of Social Media on Society and Individuals. [online] Available at: https://smallbusiness.chron.com/negative-effect-social-media-society-individuals-27617.html [Accessed 25 Apr. 2017].

Beres, D. (2017). 5 Weird Negative Effects of Social Media on Your Brain | Reader's Digest. [online] Reader's Digest. Available at: https://www.rd.com/health/wellness/negative-effects-of-social-media/ [Accessed 25 Apr. 2017].

SEO Chat. (2017). Social Media and Society: The Good, The Bad and The Ugly. [online] Available at: https://www.seochat.com/c/a/social/social-media-and-society-the-good-the-bad-and-the-ugly/ [Accessed 25 Apr. 2017].

Abhishek Karadkar, C. (2017). The impact of social media on student life. [online] Technician. Available at: https://www.technicianonline.com/opinion/article_d1142b70-5a92-11e5-86b4-cb7c98a6e45f.html [Accessed 25 Apr. 2017].