Software AG launches new cloud-based IT portfolio management tool
Software AG announced the release of Alfabet FastLane, a new Software as a Service (SaaS) solution that offers organisations the means to quickly and easily set up an IT portfolio management (ITPM) practice for governance and optimisation of their IT landscape.
Alfabet FastLane comes with pre-configured portfolio analyses, pre-built reports and dashboard views that provide commonly needed answers on portfolio issues, step-by-step guidance for data entry and user assistance to aid in task completion.
Built on best practices gleaned from years of experience as the market leader in ITPM, Alfabet FastLane provides CIOs, IT directors and other senior IT staff a pragmatic, proven tool that can be used to improve business and IT agility, create operational efficiencies, and manage IT costs.
Delivering value within days - not months
A challenge often encountered by organisations when implementing a portfolio management tool is the time and effort needed to get the product up and running at a level sufficient to allow staff to take effective, no-risk decisions on business and IT change. The ability of the IT to reliably support business initiatives is questioned and organisational effectiveness hampered. Alfabet FastLane requires no setup, configuration or training.
Product navigation is intuitive, loading portfolio data is straight-forward and the analyses needed to direct decisions are delivered out-of-the-box. Eighteen ready-to-go reports – "Business Questions" in Alfabet FastLane – answer questions around governance, transparency, rationalisation, road-mapping and risk.
These reports show portfolio aspects such as application numbers, portfolio redundancies, architectural dependencies, cost drivers, use of sensitive data and technical debt. Alfabet FastLane lets organisations focus on essential data and not ITPM tools and processes for faster time-to-value.
"The pace of our customers' business environments has increased tremendously with digitalisation and global competition. Agility is key and growing businesses have neither the time nor capacity to build their own portfolio management practice to manage IT landscapes that are increasing in size and complexity. Software AG's many years of partnering with strategic planning and portfolio management industry leaders has given us an understanding of what is truly essential in IT to drive business innovation," said Software AG CPO Stefan Sigg.
"Alfabet FastLane's out-of-the-box approach absolutely addresses the needs of smaller IT teams and companies preferring a self-service software tool that will get them up to speed quickly."
Alfabet FastLane key features
• Quick set-up, instant ITPM to deliver value fast: Pure SaaS offering; zero configuration and implementation needed. Delivers value quickly and easily with pre-defined business questions, reports, roles and simple, guided data upload. Enables focus on building the enterprise repository instead of tool configuration. Provides instantly meaningful, actionable IT insights for improved business support.
•Complex IT portfolio management made easy: Manages business, application, information and technology portfolios in one easy-to-use interface, offering immediate insight into the level of data governance and completeness across portfolios to highlight potential action areas and gaps in architecture understanding.
• Business questions answered: Relates IT portfolio management to business outcomes for a successful ITPM practice that delivers real value. AlfabetFastLane provides answers to business-relevant questions to help analyse portfolios and gain instant insights - using pre-configured reports and executive-ready graphical dashboards.
•Frequent innovation cycles: Bi-weekly product updates delivering new features developed in collaboration with Alfabet FastLane customers.
