Enhanced Automated Workflow, Milestone Tracking Improve Architectural Planning Efficiency, Better Governance Support
CAMBRIDGE, Mass. —April 1, 2008 — alfabet Inc., the leading software provider in strategic IT planning and management, today announced Release 4.0 of planningIT®
This latest version will be demonstrated at Gartner Symposium IT/Expo 2008 in Las Vegas (booth #715) from April 6 to 10.
alfabet enables companies to strategically plan and manage their IT to realize business goals. Its planningIT software is unique in tightly coupling business priorities and IT deliverables with current and future initiatives.
New Features
The latest version includes several major enhancements designed to improve how organizations plan, govern and change their business/IT architecture:
• The new Automated Workflow platform in planningIT establishes and enforces processes for planning and managing the architecture.
• The Milestone Tracking feature adds to planningIT’s already strong support for IT governance.
• Other enhancements such as Blueprint Planning and Migration Planning improve an organization’s precision, integrity and efficiency in landscape planning.
According to Erik Masing, CEO of alfabet, “In order for enterprises to focus their IT on achieving business priorities and strategic goals, collaboration between IT and business is absolutely necessary. planningIT 4.0 takes business/IT management to the next level by automating workflow processes and adding bird’s eye planning and tracking capabilities. Our customers in the US and Europe are excited about these new advances as it further bridges the gap between business and IT.”
Klaus Glatz, CIO of Austrian Andritz AG, said, “planningIT is an indispensable tool for us to control and optimize the IT for Andritz. We’re a globally active machine and plant manufacturer with 35 manufacturing locations and around 150 offices worldwide, with five strategic business areas that in part operate independently from one another. The topic of EAM is a crucial one for us because we need to know the architecture, the process landscape and the process support of the application so that we can take informed decisions and generate added value for the company.”
Automated Workflow
planningIT 4.0 provides enhanced support for automated workflows to improve IT governance, compliance and efficiency and – most importantly — collaboration in IT planning and management. The new automated workflow platform supports enterprises in configuring complex standard workflows to deal with potential bottlenecks. For example, automated processes can be designed in such a way that decisions related to the approval of a solution architecture have to be taken within a certain timeframe; if not, reminder and escalation management is automatically triggered.
Typical scenarios for automated workflows include demand management, approval for projects and the introduction of new technologies. Using workflows, the organization can:
• Track and coordinate the activities of the various stakeholder contributions
• Implement automatically evaluated decision points
• Track the progress of processes
• Keep a history of activities pertaining to workflow execution
• Measure the effectiveness of EA processes
Project Milestone Tracking
Project Milestone Tracking enables users to track projects in the context of the enterprise architecture and thus in the same environment that was used for project approval. Moreover, it allows projects to be tracked and governed in relation to each other as they simultaneously impact and transform the enterprise architecture. This new capability complements existing project management software by tracking status only at a very high level, for example at the level of project phase. planningIT 4.0 can integrate into existing project management solutions to capture the data needed for this representation.
Blueprint Planning
Blueprint Planning enables organizations to create consistent and standardized guidelines across organizations for the way IT supports business. Conventional procedures for standardization commonly start at the technology level, yet modern enterprises realize that there is an equal or even greater need for standardization on the business support level. Internationalization, mergers and acquisitions call for clearly defined business supports with a high degree of standardization in business areas without clearly differentiating characteristics.
Equally, planningIT can help when setting up a new manufacturing plant or sales organization through the use of blueprint planning. In this case, for example, a blueprint describing a standard set of business supports – or architecture pattern — that are typical for that type of manufacturing plant or sales organization could help the ITO in the new entity understand how to set up shop and become productive more quickly. Similarly, blueprint planning can be used to identify potential for streamlining the IT support, thus making it more agile in the event of business driven need for change.
Migration Planning
Defining migrations is a high-level planning task embedded into IT strategy and/or master planning. Migrations describe the planned or discussed replacement of existing applications in one or more migration steps over time. In release 4.0 migrations are graphically represented in a migration diagram and can be shown in the IT strategies and master plans with which they are associated.
planningIT 4.0 is available immediately on a subscription basis (SaaS) or perpetual license model.
About alfabet (www.alfabetinc.com)
alfabet enables companies to see, analyze, control and align IT initiatives with business priorities continuously. Its planningIT® software is unique in tightly coupling business priorities and IT returns with current and future initiatives. Competitive point solutions offer modeling or repository functions with a static view of priorities, architecture and infrastructure. alfabet provides a holistic, integrated and collaborative approach that offers continuous transparency into how IT and business information, processes and roles are changing and need to be managed over time.
The company serves a global user community of 16,000 IT professionals in more than 40 countries in a variety of industries, including automotive, financial services, telecommunications, logistics, high-tech and others. Its customers include international corporations such as AMB Generali, AXA Winterthur, BP, Daimler, Deloitte, Porsche and T-Systems. Founded in 1997, alfabet is based in Berlin with U.S. headquarters in Cambridge, Mass.
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For Additional Information
Contact:
Elyse Familant
GCC, Inc.
978-725-3637
[email protected]
