Summary
Continuing economic uncertainty is increasing pressure on IT organizations to manage costs and improve the effectiveness of projects, services and technology investments and demonstrate value to finance and business constituents. Unfortunately, many organizations lack useful data and analytics for help in making decisions about where to allocate resources and which projects deserve more or less funding. With routine maintenance of existing applications and systems taking up the majority of their budgets, IT organizations need information insights to guide the allocation of remaining discretionary funds in cost-effective ways that also can increase competitive differentiation. Planview Enterprise 9.2, which includes the release of Planview Enterprise Insight Analytics and Planview OpenSuite, offers software components and integration tools to leverage existing investments and enable organizations to gain the information insights they need to allocate funds and track the contribution of IT projects more effectively. Organizations should assess their current ability to access data about IT projects and the value to them of establishing a hub that can act as a system of record to support comprehensive analysis. Ventana Research believes that Planview 9.2 merits attention from organizations that need more complete and focused insight for IT performance management (ITPM) and project portfolio management (PPM).
Assessment
Ventana Research advises that organizations make it a top priority to improve the management and analysis of the information they rely on for IT performance management. Project portfolio management can help them track the progress and performance of projects, allocate resources wisely and align projects with strategic goals. Planview, a provider of PPM products and services, strengthened its market and technology position in February 2007 when it acquired Business Engine, a vendor of IT financial and portfolio management and analytics products. In May 2008, the company introduced Planview Enterprise Insight Analytics as part of Planview Enterprise 9.2, the latest version of its core PPM suite. The company is using the Business Engine technology to increase the range and depth of analytics in the suite. Planview also announced a set of Planview OpenSuite tools for integration; one is OpenSuite for CMDBf, the emerging configuration management database standard. Others enable integration with Microsoft SharePoint and BMC Atrium CMDB. Ventana Research believes that these moves enhance Planview’s ability to meet customers’ needs for information to manage IT performance by integrating and leveraging existing IT investments.
To apply IT performance analytics and share information, organizations must have an integrated data source. PPM tools such as Planview Enterprise are becoming important system-of-record hubs for information useful in a range of IT management tasks, including project planning and financial management. However, to offer users a complete view of the data, PPM tools need easy access to back-end data sources. The introduction of OpenSuite for CMDBf will make it easier for Planview Enterprise users to incorporate data from repositories managed by a variety of vendors’ software systems for change management, service desk management, IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL) frameworks and other functions. The repositories must be compliant with CMDBf, an emerging standard developed jointly by BMC, CA, Fujitsu, HP, IBM and Microsoft to enable standard access to multiple information sources. (CMDBf is itself a significant development could allay some organizations’ concerns that implementing multiple vendors’ CMDB software tools will create information silos that are hard to integrate.)
Increasing standardization and integration of data sources will make it easier to deploy Insight Analytics because it will reduce the time spent on simply enabling data access. While this new Enterprise component includes online analytical processing (OLAP) tools for custom development (built on Microsoft SQL Server Analysis Services), Planview is focusing more on providing a set of preconfigured cubes, views and dashboards with guidance features aimed at users who are not experienced with OLAP. The preconfigured analytics and views address project management, risk management, resource management, strategic planning, vendor management and other areas. This is where Planview is incorporating analytics it acquired with Business Engine, including for earned value management, used in financial assessment of projects’ progress toward objectives.
Through Planview OpenSuite for Microsoft SharePoint, users are able to collaborate with others by sharing analytics in e-mail, project portals and other Web-based sites. In this way, data managed by Planview Enterprise can be accessed and analyzed through users’ preferred interfaces rather than strictly through Planview’s tools. In addition, because the tools are built using the Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services framework, Insight Analytics users can implement SharePoint’s collaboration and content management features from within Planview’s user interfaces. These capabilities make it easier for managers in different departments, such as Finance and IT, to work together and reduce the time required to make decisions about IT operations, projects and services.
Market Impact
For Planview’s market differentiation, Insight Analytics is potentially the most important of the application components in Planview Enterprise 9.2. First, it addresses growing demand for better information and analytics to drive IT performance management and shared decision-making among managers in IT, finance and operations; and second, it is being released as CMDB implementations among software vendors and user organizations are maturing. Planview does not intend to change its longstanding relationship with Business Objects (an SAP company) to resell its tools for business intelligence and reporting inside its applications; however, Planview appears to be increasing its implementation of Microsoft technology. At the very least, this will make it easier for customers who are using Microsoft products to implement the Planview suite without being limited by the applications’ interfaces or other technical constraints. For Planview, the implementation is important because SAP is a competitor (with SAP Resource and Portfolio Management). Planview now has an alternative partnership option for BI and OLAP tools if competitive moves complicate the arrangement with SAP’s Business Objects. Most importantly, however, Planview’s Enterprise 9.2 release helps it compete effectively with CA, Hewlett-Packard and IBM, all of which have acquired and evolved products to augment their technology portfolios for enabling ITPM with their project portfolio management capabilities. Planview partners with BMC to be able to deliver a broader set of Business Service Management capabilities; BMC just acquired ITM Software, giving it ITM’s IT management capabilities in providing information and analytics across broad set of IT projects and services. Planview for its part has expanded their capabilities to manage IT costs and directly correlate to business value as part of larger business centric portfolio management.
Recommendation
Our research shows that organizations need better, more timely information about their IT projects and portfolios of assets and services in order to determine whether they are meeting key objectives and are on budget and on schedule. An IT information hub offers a central store from which users can access data gathered from multiple sources. It enables organizations to apply different kinds of analytics to gain a single, comprehensive view of how IT operations, services and systems are performing. Planview’s Insight Analytics component and OpenSuite interoperability software for CMDBf and SharePoint are important developments that could enable Planview Enterprise to serve as the information hub for PPM and related IT management functions. Ventana Research recommends that organizations evaluate Planview Enterprise 9.2 and focus their consideration on the capabilities of Insight Analytics and the interoperability potential of OpenSuite to leverage existing IT investments.
About the Author
David Stodder is a Research Director for Ventana Research.
