The application portfolio management (APM) discipline monitors the business, technical and cost fitness of the application portfolio. It uses factual information and analysis, allowing objective and transparent decisions. Its main objective is to identify, prioritize and propose opportunities to improve the portfolio. Opportunities include replacements, migration, modernization, consolidation and decommissioning. APM tools support the people, processes and information of the APM IT discipline to discover, monitor, analyze and visualize the fitness of the application portfolio and provide recommendations for improvement.
Gartner defines the market for enterprise architecture (EA) tools as tools that allow users to capture the interrelationships and interdependencies within and across the ecosystem of partners, operating models, capabilities, people, processes, information, applications and technologies. EA tools provide a central repository to capture data and metadata about artifacts that describe the enterprise. Models can be built to represent the relationships between these artifacts that help describe and shape the future of the enterprise. Through modeling features, EA tools enable scenario analysis of trends and disruptions and other drivers of enterprise change, to deliver realistic roadmaps.
Gartner defines strategic portfolio management (SPM) as a set of business capabilities, processes and supporting portfolio management technology. Business leaders, enterprise portfolio management office (EPMO) leaders and IT leaders require SPM to support enterprisewide strategy-to-execution alignment and adaptation. The SPM market addresses the integrated portfolio management technology needs of business leaders, EPMO leaders and IT leaders. SPM technology supports clear definition of key business strategies and desired business outcomes, and the formulation and mapping of these with key portfolio elements, such as business capabilities, investments, programs, digital and physical products, applications and projects. SPM technology allows users to create multiple portfolio and subportfolio types with focused themes, such as programs, digital products, physical products, business or IT services, projects and applications. It allows users to link and cross-reference elements in the different portfolios and subportfolios to support integrated portfolio analysis and tracking.