• 1. Background
• 5. CIO's Notes
• 2. Key People
• 6. Your Role
• 3. IT Landscape
• 7. Your Task
• 4. IT Outsourcing

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Company Background

All World Airways (AWA) is an international airline with reservation centres in Detroit, Michigan, United States and Wiesbaden, Germany. AWA has posted losses for the past six quarters.

Overall, the airline industry has been significantly affected by the economic downturn, petroleum prices, labour disputes and the competition. As a result, many of the large airlines have spun off their reservations and technical information systems to self-supporting companies and have entered into outsourcing agreements with their former support functions.

Selection of the outsourcing strategy has helped many players in the market to remove investments and assets from the balance sheets and allowed them to focus on their primary business of transportation. Moreover, this act has permitted the newly independent IT functions to sell their services to other airlines because competition with the software owner is no longer a conflict of interest.