The Top 10 Application Portfolio Management Software

Ardoq Application Portfolio Management (APM) focuses on managing and optimizing an organization’s IT portfolio by reducing low-value systems and harnessing the power of essential data. APM aims to provide a comprehensive overview of applications, their costs, and the organizational needs they fulfill, while identifying and managing application ownership.

APM also helps control application investments by understanding which applications warrant increased investment and which can be phased out. This process allows organizations to run cost savings analysis, identify optimization candidates, and understand their potential financial impact. Moreover, APM helps manage business risks by addressing the impact and stakeholder risks throughout the rationalization process.

Ardoq is known for its automation capabilities throughout the data collection and visualization processes. By focusing on value-adding analysis and agile design, Ardoq enhances engagement through seamless collaboration with colleagues. Its flexible architecture readily evolves with the organization, ensuring continuous delivery on business outcomes.

APM can be adapted to meet specific business objectives through a variety of approaches, including application rationalization, application lifecycle management, application hosting, and application integration management. These strategies offer unique insights into optimizing the application portfolio, promoting efficiency, cost-effectiveness, and better planning for change in an organization’s IT landscape.

Agile Abacus is a renowned tool for modeling, road mapping, and collaboration, aimed at connecting IT, business processes, and business strategy. Cloud-based data, dashboards, and diagrams facilitate cooperation among locations and departments. This tool is a leader in Gartner MQ and other independent analyst reports.

Users can model their enterprise architecture visually and intuitively, improving efficiency by streamlining processes. Agile Abacus is a powerful collaboration tool that enables connected and editable data and diagrams to be easily shared across the organization. It operates securely through a cloud-based platform, making it ideal for global teams and remote work.

Agile Abacus allows professionals to create and edit application and technology architectures, process models, and other diagrams using canvas-and-stencil diagramming. The tool also connects data and diagrams in one place, ensuring consistency and accuracy. Furthermore, Abacus offers dashboards with data stories and KPIs using business-friendly visualizations and editable catalogs to simplify data management.

The Agile Enterprise Architecture tool also automates metrics and KPIs with prebuilt or no-code algorithms, enabling tracking trends and comparing future state architecture options. It has machine learning capabilities for faster data management and analysis and can be embedded in MS Teams or other workplace software for easy access. It connects people to key data using dynamic visualizations like graph view. This offers interactive graph database visualizations and makes it simple to navigate through enterprise information.

Bizzdesign Application Portfolio Management (APM+) is a portfolio management solution that integrates future state design and road-mapping with current state management. This enables businesses to make informed transformation decisions and efficiently manage their applications. Key features include data import capabilities via Microsoft Excel or Bizzdesign Horizzon OpenAPI, and the ability for enterprise architecture teams to use fact-driven data to drive change efficiently.

APM+ offers predefined dashboards and lean templates, which enable transparency, impact analysis, and support transformation planning. The dashboards aid decision-making and help identify potential areas for change, while lean templates provide full traceability from strategy to implementation. Additionally, APM+ dashboards offer insight and decision support by providing options for self-exploration, analysis, and drill-down. The platform allows users to customize their applications portfolio with interactive visuals and pre-configured ServiceNow CSDM-ArchiMate mapping.

Some of the major benefits of APM+ include the ability to design future state architecture, rapid time to value, mature applications portfolio management, and improved connectivity and collaboration between stakeholders. With APM+, businesses can show traceability from strategy to investment, architect future state, and provide decision-support for investment decisions. This holistic overview of the application estate enables transformation analysis, allowing organizations to respond effectively to business change, trends, and threats.

CAST Highlight is an automated portfolio governance solution that provides rapid insights across an organization’s entire software portfolio. It covers a wide range of aspects such as cloud maturity, technical debt, software composition, resiliency, agility, maintenance costs, and green impact. The platform is designed to be operational within a week and supports over 50 technologies, offering customizable dashboards, instant drilldowns, REST APIs, and CI/CD plugins.

The solution enables leaders to gain a single, integrated view of their portfolio, facilitating informed decision-making to reduce maintenance costs, optimize resource allocation, and minimize technical debt. It also aids in the prioritization and segmentation of applications for cloud migration and optimization. CAST Highlight identifies security vulnerabilities and IP licensing exposures in open-source software and offers recommendations on priority actions without disrupting developers.

In addition to providing insights on resiliency, agility, and technical debt, CAST Highlight also focuses on green software development, helping organizations make their technology more sustainable. It pinpoints green deficiencies in the code and suggests improvements to lower CO2 emissions, while enhancing performance, and resiliency. Overall, CAST Highlight aims to help organizations have a comprehensive and efficient approach to portfolio governance.

EOS Application Portfolio Management (APM) enables businesses to efficiently manage, govern, and optimize their application portfolios for today’s digital landscape. With APM, organizations can achieve a comprehensive understanding of their application portfolio and leverage it to drive various IT initiatives, such as application rationalization, business transformation, IT simplification, and IT governance.

APM allows enterprises to establish a robust, integrated application portfolio by connecting it with related assets (both within and outside the platform). The system also increases portfolio visibility by providing cost and risk views, enabling data-driven discussions on the return on investment for specific IT projects. APM’s out-of-the-box assessment toolkits are based on industry-standard best practices, and facilitate the acceleration of application portfolio transformation, identifying areas for improvement and optimization.

Both effective data gathering, and ease of data access are key features of EOS APM, with robust role-based security permissions allowing for data updates from multiple stakeholders across the enterprise. The platform also integrates existing data using REST APIs and automated batch processes. Additionally, users can take advantage of APM’s extensive range of out-of-the-box dashboards, offering a variety of visualizations that can be tailored to specific needs, facilitating increased adoption and comprehension of the application portfolio.

LeanIX is a technology management platform that is designed to support enterprise architects in leveraging technology, making decisions, and managing change. It features a flexible, best practice data model that helps businesses meet future challenges. The platform is outcome-driven, offering increased speed, reduced risk, and cost savings by providing real-time overviews of IT landscapes and business capabilities. This is essential for business transformation.

The platform includes customizable dashboards, KPIs, and collaboration tools to involve everyone within an organization in building a company-wide trusted data source, enabling continuous transformation. In addition, integrated reporting and diagramming offer real-time overviews of IT landscapes, while innovative roadmap and scenario planning capabilities help organizations plan for future changes in their IT landscapes.

LeanIX also includes reference catalogs to maintain high-quality, up-to-date inventories and can integrate with many out-of-the-box solutions and open APIs. This allows the automated import and export of data. The LeanIX Meta Model can be tailored to an organization’s needs, and the platform is extendable through the LeanIX Store, which offers a range of best-practice reports, surveys, and integrations.

LeanIX is a comprehensive technology management platform that supports enterprise architects in decision-making and change management, with a focus on collaboration, real-time overviews, and planning for future IT landscape transformations.

OrbusInfinity allows organizations to enhance their ability to make informed decisions regarding technology investments by providing a centralized view of IT assets, associated costs, and alignment with business goals. The solution is a comprehensive IT portfolio management tool that integrates seamlessly with ITSM systems such as ServiceNow and Cherwell, providing real-time visibility into the IT landscape, including performance, costs, and project status.

With accelerated IT portfolio optimization and risk mitigation, organizations can evaluate dependencies, financial impacts, and the strategic importance of IT assets. This solution assesses applications based on cost, risk, business fit, and technology fit, generating application and technology roadmaps for rationalization. Streamlined IT governance and compliance ensure the enforcement of technology standards, technology compliance adherence, and enhanced standards accountability.

An intelligent decision-making process is enabled through data-driven reports and visualizations for IT Portfolio Management. This allows faster and smarter decision making to optimize the IT landscape. This solution also identifies cost savings across the application portfolio while increasing business fit and performance and driving informed rationalization decisions. By projecting changes to application and technology portfolios needed to achieve business goals, organizations can generate compelling roadmaps that comply with business strategy, driving controlled technology change and transparent communication.

Finally, managing technologies and enforcing standards ensures future-proof technology investments. This approach analyzes technologies for cost, risk, duplication, business fit, and technology fit, with auditing and assessment technology assets for compliance purposes. By visualizing technology assets in an easily digestible format and monitoring changes in the technology landscape, organizations can identify potential risks and prioritize mitigation efforts.

Planview offers value stream management software designed to help CIOs and transformation executives, as well as product and engineering leaders to improve their software delivery and product development execution. The software provides end-to-end visibility into value streams and cross-tool, cross-discipline insights which allow users to accelerate time-to-market, reduce costs, and attract and retain top talent.

The solution addresses issues such as disconnected delivery processes, duplicated tasks, poor visibility into bottlenecks and dependencies, and unpredictability of deliveries. Planview’s software aims to improve productivity and efficiency, ensure innovation and compliance, and provide a single set of metrics for the entire IT portfolio.

With Planview, users can connect data to business outcomes through board-ready, simple metrics in non-technical language, with analytics and proactive alerts. The software is complemented by personalized coaching from a team of award-winning authors, thought leaders, and experts to assist users in their digital transformation journey.

Planview’s scalable and secure architecture ensures seamless data exchange and reporting, while its ability to connect to existing ecosystems and integrate with over 60 tools allows users to deploy the solution quickly and efficiently. The software is compatible with partner solutions such as UiPath, Apptio, IBM, Micro Focus, Jama, and Tricentis, and offers a turnkey solution with pre-built, no-code connectors and preconfigured dashboards.

ServiceNow Application Portfolio Management (APM) is essential for organizations seeking to gain better visibility and control of their business applications to ensure the delivery of their strategic goals. A well-implemented APM system can reduce costs, minimize risks, enhance strategic thinking, and support future business strategies. Key components of APM include a centralized APM portal, application portfolio decision-making, capability mapping, and technology portfolio management.

By creating a centralized inventory of business applications, organizations can gain full visibility of their application landscape, leading to reduced license, infrastructure, and support costs through the retirement of redundant applications. APM also enables faster migration of the right applications to the cloud and eliminates risks to critical applications from outdated software and hardware. Through APM, organizations can ensure their application portfolio is better aligned with their business strategy.

The advantages of ServiceNow’s APM system stem from its ability to leverage data and capabilities across the Now Platform, including Strategic Portfolio Management (SPM), IT Service Management (ITSM), IT Operations Management (ITOM), IT Asset Management (ITAM), and Integrated Risk Management (IRM). ServiceNow’s APM solution provides a comprehensive approach to managing an organization’s application portfolio, improving decision-making, and driving successful technology investments.

Alfabet is an application portfolio management (APM) solution developed by Software AG. It helps businesses to effectively manage their applications and optimize resources, tasks, and costs. Alfabet provides a single application inventory for improved communication, transparency, and impact analysis, ultimately leading to reduced project costs. It assists organizations in analyzing redundancies and consolidations, ultimately enhancing agility and minimizing IT risk, while ensuring improved governance of the application portfolio.

The Alfabet solution features an application inventory, stakeholder support, portfolio assessments, and portfolio governance. Application owners and domain architects use intuitive wizards and workflows to manage inventory data which consist of business, technology, information, and functional perspectives. Web and mobile-based portals provide project managers with insights into the application landscape, while ad-hoc reporting addresses any stakeholder inquiries. Alfabet aids IT management, business stakeholders, and domain architects in analyzing the portfolio along multiple dimensions, such as technology health, cost, risk, usage, and business fit.

Software AG improves the APM process by offering a standard solution, combined with a proven methodology, role implementation templates, standard reports and dashboards, and a framework for rapid integration to data sources and other IT systems. This all-encompassing approach enables organizations to achieve APM success efficiently and effectively.