Balancing the twin pressures of how to support the business more effectively and reduce IT costs is a constant challenge in all our lives.
Particularly visible pinch points are business applications — the lifeblood of any organisation, as they underpin its processes.
There's increasing pressure on the IT department to ensure that applications can change and adapt to support the business strategy and enable the organisation to take advantage of new market opportunities.
But maintaining existing applications can be very expensive — industry research indicates that at least 50 per cent of investment in application development and support is spent just keeping the lights on.
In a climate of static or shrinking IT budgets, that leaves insufficient funds for the higher-value application development activities that help drive the business forward and enable competitive advantage.
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And if the IT department can't deliver quickly enough, impatient users will be increasingly tempted to find their own solutions, by building their own applications or buying services online.
All of which only adds more complications, with applications that can't be integrated with other systems and are outside the control of the IT team.
So are these challenges addressable, or are they an inevitable consequence of the complexity of any modern business?
Typical problems you may encounter
What happens when your company wants to launch a new product to the market, or open up a new channel to customers?
Vincent Smyth | Published: 15:02 GMT, 09 January 2012
New business software has to be regularly deployed, but without regular rationalisation, it’s easy to have too many redundant applications. Identifying owned, installed and used software is a must to weed out unnecessary applications. Automated application rationalisation and software licence optimisation tools are essential to ensuring that companies’ software estates are updated and optimised, to ensure that the right applications are available to users, when and where needed.