Is incredible as it may seem, large companies in ­particular ­often lack a clear overview of their IT system landscape. ­Important IT performance indicators and architecture information which affect corporate performance are not ­immediately ­available and must be collected by painstaking work. There is frequently no clarity as to who is saving, maintaining, ­modifying, or using what data.  

How do you manage 2500 IT applications?  

So one of the greatest challenges for the CIOs of a corporation is to maintain a constant flow of information describing what happens with the data which have been entrusted to them in their companies. Data security requires of them, data protection demands of them, that they act prudently: they are responsible for the infrastructure which is the foundation of business operations, they and their teams make sure that the IT systems are available and that the applications meet requirements which the business side makes on them, they must determine framework conditions for values and targets of the IT function in the company, and establish a strong alliance between IT and business strategy.  

IT is today woven into the factor of almost every corporate process. It is not unusual for companies which have been incorporated into a global network to have several hundred, perhaps even several thousand, IT systems in their infrastructure. It is common knowledge that the interaction of the various applications and IT systems does not always proceed without problems. Information technology is always the first to be addressed whenever it becomes necessary to respond to changes, so the adaptation of the required performance indicators is a constant process requiring continuous updating.  

Despite the high level of networking, this event is ­precisely one of the most challenging tasks to be mastered by IT. ­Savings ­potential is substantial when you optimize operating costs ­related to the complexity of today’s IT landscapes and ­architecture views. The necessity to adapt the linkage of process models to an IT landscape, to set up an IT architecture, and to secure the care and maintenance of business processes never goes away. When there are modifications of business processes, all of the affected applications and systems can be addressed, and the impact on dependent processes can be determined and disclosed immediately.