Phil Murphy, principal analyst at Forrester Research, joined Micro Focus customers and partners at Stamford Bridge, home to one of England’s premier soccer teams: Chelsea FC. 

With Application Portfolio Management (APM) firmly placed at the top of many CIO agendas for the year ahead, the panel were keen to share their views on the challenges of reducing IT costs while innovating for business growth, and to hear more of how APM, and Enterprise View in particular, could help.

After some words of welcome from Micro Focus host and CTO, Stuart McGill, emphasising the strategic importance of the CAP program, panellists enjoyed Phil Murphy’s opening pitch (no pun intended) in which he drew some interesting parallels between the role of a football manager and the tasks faced by the head of an IT organisation; both must maximise the effectiveness of their existing resources while ‘scouting’ for new talent or opportunities for growth and innovation. Key concerns include understanding where the existing value lies. Which ‘players’ are worth investing in? Which should be retired and replaced? Where are the functional gaps in the ‘portfolio’? How well will the new integrate with the old?

Murphy’s assertion, that IT is mostly blind to the true costs and value of its existing IT assets, resonated well with the audience and provoked some interesting discussions that continued throughout the day.

Following Phil’s industry view, Micro Focus customer and long-time user of its APM solution, HSBC, took to the floor to speak of its experiences in building a robust portfolio management practice. Two years ago, as part of a corporate objective to reduce IT costs by ten percent, HSBC’s European IT operation introduced a number of strategic measures. David Dawber, manager of the APM implementation, spoke of how HSBC introduced centralised support in a series of offshore teams, and through the use of APM tooling and processes was able to transfer work into this remote team reliably and in weeks rather than months. The use of APM, Dawber stated, had provided a common language throughout IT, largely removing subjectivity from project discussions and enabling fact-based decision-making.

Now, with most of their portfolio housed within the APM repository, and attention spreading throughout the group, the European team is looking forward to continued growth in the use of APM across the whole of HSBC and a time when it’s not only the offshore teams’ output being managed, but all HSBC teams throughout the group.

Having heard something of the challenges and benefits of APM, it was the turn for Micro Focus to present its Enterprise View roadmap and provide some highlights from the forthcoming product release, Enterprise View 5.6.

One of the roadmap items that was particularly well received was the activity currently underway to integrate Enterprise View with leading Project Portfolio Management (PPM) solutions, enabling organisations to bring their IT portfolio management disciplines much closer together. Echoing a view expressed earlier by Phil Murphy, the true goal of complete visibility in IT management comes only when these disparate management activities are united.

In demonstrating the forthcoming release, Stefano Borghi, Micro Focus developer, highlighted the browser-based Portal functionality, which allows much greater flexibility in deployment and customisation, and supports the creation of ad-hoc reports and user-specific dashboards.

Following a lively roundtable event, chaired by Phil Murphy and Stuart McGill, in which the potential for APM to support business growth was discussed, the formal part of the day was concluded with a joint presentation from IBM and Banca Monte dei Paschi di Siena (MPS), the oldest bank in the world and long-time user of the Micro Focus APM solution, in which they spoke of the strategic advantages being achieved through the management of its application portfolio.

With considerable time allowed for networking throughout the day, during breaks and into the evening’s meal and football game, the true value of the event was realised, as peers shared opinions and business cards.

As Julian Dobbins, Product Solutions Director at Micro Focus stated, “Micro Focus Customer Advisory Panels represent our finest source of strategic external input for guiding product roadmap, associated functionality and timescales – and this first event has been a tremendous success. That’s not just our opinion. This event is about hearing what our customers and partners have to say, and that includes hearing their thoughts on the event itself.”

Micro Focus Customer Advisory Panels run throughout the year as a series of face-to-face meetings and web-based events. Look out for future details.