Recently, Gartner took a new look at the whole notion of PPM, from an enterprise and IT perspective. For those of you that have seen my previous post, you know that we applaud this change. The landscape outlined in the new Gartner PPM Market Universe is dead on with where portfolio management is headed. A major component of this research is the new Magic Quadrant for Integrated IT Portfolio Analysis Applications. At Planview, we are humbled to be positioned in the Leaders Quadrant in this new Magic Quadrant that redefines the IT portfolio landscape. Rightfully so, the title of this new Magic Quadrant does not include the word “project”, because managing projects is just one part of any IT organization. IT organizations provide their internal and external customers with applications and services that run their businesses. Projects are simply a mechanism for driving change within the application and services portfolio, as well as the underlying IT infrastructure. This interplay is at the heart of IT management and hence the new Magic Quadrant.
Certainly we all recognize Gartner’s track record for market insight and their influence in the IT community. Gartner’s endorsement of “Integrated Portfolio Analysis” is sure to stimulate a lot of conversations in the IT community. But I think it is worth noting several historical milestones that got us to this point.
The first occurred in 2005 when Forrester published what at the time was a seminal perspective on Integrated IT Management or IIM. This report spurred the initial wave of thinking in the portfolio management community on the potential expanded reach of portfolio management. It was also influential in driving Planview’s original investment into supporting application and services portfolios as part of our solution. It was probably a little ahead of its time; but Margo, Phil, and team got the ball rolling.
The second moment happened in 2008 with the release of ITIL 4. A significant component of ITIL 4 was the addition of services portfolio management as a formal discipline. This was the next jolt in driving the recognition of portfolios beyond projects. Unfortunately, ITIL 4 momentum was all but squashed by the onset of the economic recession, but ITIL initiatives are beginning to pick up steam again.
The economic recession, and the “new normal” it introduced, brought the third key milestone in this evolution. The intense financial pressure that IT organizations were under drove them to rationalize every aspect of their business. Globally we saw IT organizations go after one of their largest and most costly portfolios with a vengeance — the application portfolio. The economic recession forced a new level of maturity in application portfolio management.
So that brings us up to today and the latest Gartner research. There is a great opportunity for IT organizations to drive towards an Integrated Portfolio Analysis model. Very few are there today, but when I meet with customers it is clear they see the value, and most are already doing bits and pieces with varying results. Gartner adding its perspective represents another significant milestone in this emerging IT management capability; it will be interesting to see how IT portfolio analysis evolves as a result.
