Application Portfolio Management

How many times have you read a book and realized that you can't recall a major character? Or, maybe you were left wondering how an important plot came to pass. The average novel contains 50,000 lines of text. Now, imagine a multimillion-line novel written by a team of authors over the course of decades that was repeatedly rewritten to the point that entire chapters were no longer relevant to the plot. That is the typical application portfolio of today.
Application Portfolio Management (APM) is a practice that has emerged in mid to large size Information Technology (IT) organizations since the mid 1990s. Application Portfolio Management attempts to use the lessons of financial portfolio management to justify and measure the financial benefits of each application in comparison to the costs of the application's maintenance and operations.
Application portfolios control your most central business processes. However, over time, they tend to become more complex, less manageable and less aligned with your enterprise goals. In fact, many core business operations are likely automated by applications that can't be efficiently adapted to support real-world business requirements.
APM solutions allow organizations to identify, prioritize and act on initiatives that realign the application portfolio with business goals. They do so by trending technical and business metrics regarding enterprise applications' value, cost and risk. This information is then presented back to the right level within your organization to facilitate decision-making and implementation, an APM solution can measure where weaknesses and value exist.
APM offers an approach to bring your application portfolio in-line with your business requirements. However, organizations should be careful when selecting an APM solution. They should look for solutions that create immediate value by quickly centralizing the right mix of business and technical metrics.