Network World — Virtually every employee, process and transaction depends on an overly complex business application environment that has grown organically over the decades with no overarching strategy. The environment is populated by aging applications whose ownership, management and user base can be hard to identify. Sometimes these applications are serving inefficient processes that don't meet business demands. And all of this is managed by an already overwhelmed technology staff.

Furthermore, as the application portfolios expand, so do the maintenance and support costs, along with complexity and risk. Organizations are weighed down by technology maintenance costs that restrict the innovation necessary for growth. Today, only 30% of typical technology budgets are dedicated to business innovation. This is because the proliferation of sprawl has created silos in data centers that consume up to 70% of the technology budget for maintenance and operations.

Properly managing the application portfolio can result in many benefits, including improved control, the ability to make changes quickly, enhanced visibility into costs and increased confidence in technology to drive business growth.

So what can be done about application sprawl and the associated increase in costs, complexity and risk?

Let's first look at the root cause of the problem: lack of visibility and control over the applications portfolio, which may span custom, off-the-shelf and enterprise applications.

With minimal visibility into the applications, the technology organization is not able to make precise, fact-based decisions for maintaining a properly aligned portfolio. For example, it can't identify what applications need to be kept, which ones are redundant and which ones can be retired. Some companies may have an inventory of applications, but they generally do not have a complete view of the portfolio or a mechanism to conduct regular updates.

With this lack of understanding the best a technology manager can do is treat every application equally -- servicing and supporting them at the same level regardless of their cost or value. The results are a never-ending cycle of:

* Increased cost -- The sheer level of work and costs required to keep the application portfolio up and running causes a drag on the company's financial performance. It also dramatically reduces technology's flexibility and their ability to innovate.

* Increased complexity and risk -- The probability of technical issues or problems rises as the number and complexity of applications continues to grow.

* Limited ability to drive business growth -- As long as the technology organization spends 70% of its resources maintaining the status quo, it can't engage in strategic business initiatives or play its proper (and vitally necessary) role in facilitating success.

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