Torii is named a Leader in the July 2024 Gartner ® Magic Quadrant™️ for SaaS Management Platforms.
Get ReportGartner, Magic Quadrant for SaaS Management Platforms, Tom Cipolla, Yolanda Harris, Jaswant Kalay, Dan Wilson, Ron Blair, Lina Al Dana, 22 July 2024
GARTNER is a registered trademark and service mark of Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates in the U.S. and internationally, and MAGIC QUADRANT is a registered trademark of Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates and are used herein with permission. All rights reserved. Gartner does not endorse any vendor, product or service depicted in its research publications, and does not advise technology users to select only those vendors with the highest ratings or other designation. Gartner research publications consist of the opinions of Gartner’s research organization and should not be construed as statements of fact. Gartner disclaims all warranties, expressed or implied, with respect to this research, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose.
Application Portfolio Management (APM) is a process for overseeing and managing the entirety of software applications within an organization. It enables IT managers to balance the cost, benefits and risks of each application and make informed decisions about its role, status, and overall contribution to the business strategy.
But, isn’t Application Portfolio Management just about managing a bunch of applications?
The simple answer is no – it’s much more complex than that. APM stretches beyond just application management; it incorporates elements of:
It’s also concerned with application integration, optimization, and governance.
Essentially, Application Portfolio Management is a holistic approach to handling application deployment, maintenance, and support, right from customization, testing, and application upgrades through to migration, ensuring applications’ scalability, reliability, and availability. A comprehensive APM strategy considers every facet of an application’s lifecycle, performance, and influence on the business.
Note: Torii’s SaaS Management Platform significantly amplifies your Application Portfolio Management efforts. It provides astute Shadow IT visibility, automates entire app lifecycles & optimizes license operations. Learn more.
In high-tech companies, where IT landscapes are complex and rapidly evolving, Application Portfolio Management (APM) plays a crucial role. Here are some examples that resonate with IT managers or directors in such environments:
Rationalization Project: An IT director at a software company initiated an application rationalization project. By evaluating their existing applications, they identified redundant apps, consolidated similar functions, and decommissioned outdated systems, leading to significant cost savings and efficiency gains.
Integrating Business and IT Goals: A high-tech enterprise used APM to align its application portfolio with its business capabilities. This process involved mapping applications to business processes and goals, ensuring that each application added value to the company’s operations.
Managing Technical Debt: An organization tackled its technical debt by assessing the long-term costs associated with maintaining older applications. This assessment led to the modernization of legacy systems, enhancing performance and reducing maintenance costs.
Shadow IT Discovery: In the case of Lunchbox, a real-world example, the use of Torii’s Shadow IT discovery tool in their APM process revealed four times more applications than initially known. This discovery was critical in managing their application portfolio effectively and led to substantial cost savings.
These examples demonstrate the diverse applications of APM in a high-tech environment, from rationalization and cost management to aligning IT with business goals and uncovering shadow IT. The strategic use of APM tools like ServiceNow and Torii can transform how organizations manage their software assets, leading to more informed decisions and optimized operations.
Note: Torii’s SaaS Management Platform provides full visibility into your SaaS ecosystem. Test it out with a 14 day free trial.
Torii SaaS Management Platform can assist in all of the above aspects, providing effective SaaS operations automation, visibility over SaaS expenditure, and the capability to build custom integrations for your apps. It provides a centralized platform making the APM process easier, effective, and time-efficient.
By following these best practices, organizations can ensure that their application portfolio is optimized, cost-effective, and aligned with their strategic business objectives.
Several tools are pivotal in implementing and maintaining effective Application Portfolio Management (APM). These tools aid in inventory management, performance analysis, cost tracking, and alignment with business goals. Here’s a list of some essential APM tools:
Torii SaaS Management Platform: Specializes in uncovering shadow IT and managing SaaS applications. Its automated discovery capabilities are crucial for maintaining an accurate and comprehensive application inventory. You can design custom automation to flag and follow up with users any time they introduce a new app to the portfolio. Torii also helps you manage spend management, employee lifecycle automation and more.
ServiceNow Application Portfolio Management: Offers a comprehensive suite for managing applications, focusing on cost, usage, and performance metrics. It integrates well with ServiceNow’s broader IT service management platform.
Planview: Provides tools for portfolio and resource management, ideal for aligning IT investments with business strategies.
Apptio: Focuses on technology business management, helping organizations understand and manage the cost, quality, and value of their IT applications.
CAST Software Intelligence: Analyzes software health, complexity, and technical debt, offering insights for rationalizing and optimizing application portfolios.
Micro Focus: Offers solutions that include portfolio management, application modernization, and software delivery automation.
Flexera: Provides software asset management solutions to optimize software licensing costs and compliance.
BMC Helix: Offers a cloud-based ITSM platform that includes application portfolio management features, focusing on aligning IT services with business needs.
Snow Software: Specializes in software asset management, helping organizations optimize software spending and compliance.
LeanIX: Aims at enterprise architecture and cloud governance, supporting organizations in managing their IT landscapes effectively.
These tools vary in their specific features and focus areas, but collectively, they provide a robust set of capabilities for managing application portfolios efficiently. By leveraging these tools, organizations can gain better visibility into their application landscape, make informed decisions about technology investments, and ensure alignment with business goals.
Understanding Application Portfolio Management (APM) involves familiarity with several related concepts. These concepts help in comprehending the broader context of APM and its role in organizational strategy and IT management. Here are some key related concepts:
Enterprise Architecture (EA): This refers to the conceptual blueprint that defines the structure and operation of an organization. EA aims to align a company’s strategy with its IT infrastructure, enhancing efficiency and effectiveness.
Software Asset Management (SAM): SAM involves managing and optimizing the purchase, deployment, maintenance, utilization, and disposal of software applications within an organization. It’s closely linked to cost management and compliance in APM.
Business Capability: This is the expression of what a business does and can do, often mapped in APM to ensure applications support these capabilities.
Technical Debt: This concept refers to the implied cost of additional rework caused by choosing an easy solution now instead of using a better approach that would take longer. Managing technical debt is a critical aspect of APM.
Application Rationalization: This is the process of strategically identifying business applications to determine which should be kept, replaced, consolidated, or retired to streamline operations and reduce costs. It’s a core activity in APM for optimizing the application portfolio.
SaaS Management: In the context of APM, this involves overseeing and optimizing the use and cost of Software-as-a-Service applications, which are increasingly prevalent in modern IT environments.
Project Management: This encompasses the planning, initiating, executing, controlling, and closing the work of a team to achieve specific goals. In APM, project management skills are essential for implementing changes to the application portfolio.
Business Process Management (BPM): This is the discipline of improving a business process from end to end by analyzing it, modelling how it works in different scenarios, executing improvements, monitoring the new process, and continually optimizing it.
Application Lifecycle Management: This encompasses the supervision of software from its initial planning through retirement. It involves making informed decisions about investment, maintenance, and decommissioning of applications.
Cloud Computing: The practice of using a network of remote servers hosted on the Internet to store, manage, and process data. In APM, cloud computing plays a vital role in determining the infrastructure strategy for application deployment.
Understanding these concepts helps IT managers and directors manage their application portfolios more effectively, ensuring alignment with business objectives and optimal use of IT resources.
Application Portfolio Management (APM) is the practice of managing a collection of software applications in an organization in a coordinated way. It involves evaluating, rationalizing, and planning applications to ensure they align with business objectives and are cost-effective.
Why is Application Portfolio Management important?APM is crucial for ensuring that an organization’s software applications are optimally supporting its business processes, maximizing ROI, reducing costs, managing risks, and aligning IT strategy with business goals.
What are the key components of APM?Key components include application inventory, business alignment, application rationalization, cost management, technical debt management, and lifecycle management.
How does APM help in managing technical debt?APM helps identify and prioritize technical debt by assessing the long-term costs and risks associated with maintaining outdated or inefficient applications, guiding decisions on upgrades, replacements, or retirements.
What is application rationalization in APM?Application rationalization is the process of analyzing an organization’s application portfolio to determine which applications should be kept, replaced, consolidated, or retired to streamline operations and reduce costs.