Reconciling IT portfolio with business processes

By Cat Yong

Enterprise architecture (EA), for Malaysia, really came into the limelight this year, with government agencies like MAMPU, kicking off national-level initiatives to help spur government transformation efforts along.

Long story short, the high rate of IT project failures, no matter whether in the public or private sector, could be contributed to IT and business being misaligned, and this is where enterprise architecture steps in, by trying to bridge the gap between the two.

With objectives being set by the business and IT facilitating its execution, processes will have to change, for IT projects to finally achieve what they were set out to do.

For an enterprise software company, that specialises and emphasises business process management over and over again, the burning question that arises is this: what is Sottware AG’s role when it comes to enterprise architecture tools and solutions?

What are Software AG’s existing offerings and what is their roadmap for this area which is rising up the ranks in terms of CIO priority?

Addressing the legacy IT systems that a number of organisations are saddled with, is well and good, but EA tools moving forward, how well are they taking into account business users and subject matter experts requirements and aligning them with IT skills and resources?

Software AG’s EA approach
Software AG, Chief Marketing Officer, Ivo Totev described, “Different people understand different things about enterprise architecture. There are certain, very discrete dimensions we need to look into.”

For example, Software AG does have existing tools for enterprise architecture, under their business process management (BPM) ARIS portfolio. In a nutshell, Aris addresses requirements elicitation, management and business process alignment. 

Totev said, “We have a great tool set with Aris, but there are SMEs that want to start immediately, hence a cloud-based BPM in Process Live, that is built from Aris know-how.

Software AG also addressed the two main BPM trends of cloud and social, by introducing social BPM and mobile BPM.

“These helps get alignment in the organisation on what the business wants, what business process should look like, what the requirements are of a particular project… and everyone works in a social environment on the live model.”

However, when an organisation starts to ask before embarking upon a project, “Do we have a solution for this, or do we need something completely new?” IT portfolio management comes into play, via their Alfabet acquisition.

“So, process and business requirements management is done by Aris and IT portfolio management is done by Alfabet. Both tools are now fully integrated and can exchange data,” said Totev.

Process Live and Portfolios Live, make up two of the 4 components of Software AG’s unified platform-as-a-service (PaaS), Software AG Live.

AgileApps Live and Integration Live are also offered as part of this unified PaaS. However, Integration Live is due for release next year.

Market landscape
Totev added about their Alfabet acquisition, “With the combination of Aris and Alfabet, we don’t see anyone in the market, that have this breadth of solutions.

“Everybody was either competing with Aris or competing with Alfabet. There was never one company who had both these dimensions.”

Analysts companies like Forrester also view the acquisition which happened last June, as a sorely needed coming together of business process-centric views with IT portfolio management, two strengths that Software AG and Alfabet possessed respectively.

*Enterprise IT News was a guest of Software AG’s to Innovation World 2013 in San Francisco from 8th October till 10th October.*