What Information Systems Are You Using To Manage Your Technology Assets?

by Jeff Tash

You’re a C-level executive (CxO) responsible for charting a safe course for your enterprise’s future. That’s a tough task in these turbulent times. From your cockpit you control four levers labeled: 1) money; 2) people; 3) property; and 4) technology. You manipulate these four levers to react in response to changes triggered by events you cannot control -- both threats as well as opportunities.

The first lever is money. All kinds of IT systems have been created to help you manage your financial assets. The second lever is people. Like accounting and financial systems, human resource systems abound to assist you in managing your HR assets. The third lever is property. Various kinds of asset management systems have been developed to help you monitor and track all the plant, equipment and property that your enterprise owns. But what about the fourth and final lever, the one labeled technology? Unlike money, people, and property -- all relatively stable -- technology is changing more rapidly than ever, at blazingly fast speeds. My question to you is, “What information systems are you using to manage your technology assets?”

Do you know what technology you own? Do you know who is using what technology? Do you consider your enterprise agile -- poised and ready for rapid technological change?

A technology portfolio enables you to manage your technology risks in much the same way that your financial portfolio lets you manage your financial risks. A technology portfolio’s primary job is risk mitigation. That means, as quickly as possible, it will provide you with information to identify winners, eliminate losers, and better manage your overall technology investments.

Building a technology portfolio focuses your attention on where you’re spending your money -- namely on purchasing IT products. Most organizations own hundreds, if not thousands, of different types of IT products from scores, if not hundreds, of different vendors. The redundancy and overlap are hugely expensive. A technology portfolio can lead to substantial cost savings through consolidation and standardization.

A technology portfolio describes all the IT assets your organization has purchased. Your portfolio begins with IT infrastructure products which include clientware, middleware, serverware, manageware, and platforms. An IT infrastructure is incredibly complex and expensive. But, by itself, infrastructure really doesn’t do much of anything. Value is achieved only by layering applications on top of the infrastructure. Applications can either be built or bought. Your technology portfolio includes all the tools used to develop your applications as well as products purchased as commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) application packages. Finally, applications, regardless of whether they’re built or bought, generate data that need to be mined and analyzed. Your technology portfolio also includes your business intelligence tools.

Your technology portfolio allows you to easily see what products are being used, and by whom -- at a glance. At the same time, developers and end users can use the technology portfolio to immediately see at a glance which products have been selected as corporate standards. This “middle out” approach directs strategic information up to top management while it simultaneously communicates out from IT to the vast network of people who collectively comprise your IT constituency.

The amount of money your organization spends on IT products is expected to grow significantly over the next several years with the emergence of Web Services. Now is the time to start preparing for a very different future computing environment -- one based upon a product-centric service oriented architecture (SOA).

You can’t afford NOT TO MANAGE your technology portfolio. Moving forward, IT needs to provide enterprise solutions that are more robust, more agile, and less costly than existing applications. You need to consolidate. That means: eliminate redundancy; replace inflexible, unscalable legacy systems; reduce maintenance and support costs; and improve your responsiveness when business partners request a change.

Use your technology portfolio to communicate IT architectures, standards, and strategies. Start by establishing a baseline. You need to know where you’re at before you can make decisions about moving forward. Make information available so that your business partners can better understand IT’s capabilities and you can all collaborate better together on setting future strategic directions. The ultimate goal is to chart a course that will enable your enterprise to use its technology investments for competitive advantage.