Case competition: Journey to the cloud

On March 12 the UW Foster School’s Master of Science in Information Systems program held a case competition with Accenture. Students had two days to study the case and come up with their solutions. The case was “CoreCo’s Journey to the Cloud.” CoreCo, an established company in the automotive industry, hires Accenture to help their IT division develop a way to launch into the automated vehicle market. Automated vehicles require a huge amount of data storage and CoreCo’s existing IT system could not accommodate that much data. Students were asked to present a solution for moving from an on-premise data center to the cloud.

Eleven teams presented to panel of judges. The judges included Jason Archer (Accenture), Sandeep Arora (Accenture), Deb Dey (Foster MSIS), Ming Fan (Foster MSIS), and Tim Haser (Costco). Three teams were selected to advance to round two. The winning team was Manohar Cherukuru, Sandeep Juthani, and Aniket Pathak. The judges felt the winning team came up with solutions to the case that demonstrated a strong understanding of CoreCo’s priorities, developed a creative framework for IT management, and anticipated the client’s questions with detailed analysis to reinforce their solution.

The case competition, offered annually, serves as a capstone experience for students in the MSIS program. It tests students’ ability to apply information systems solutions to a business problem while working in a team and utilizing leadership skills. The competition also gives students an opportunity to present and communicate their solution to a real-world problem.