Elly Yates-Roberts |
Data has always been integral to business success. For example, for any company to stay afloat, it must first understand its costs and revenue and make decisions based on this information. But computer systems, IT infrastructure and digital technology have generated a greater quantity of high-quality data, giving businesses new ways to expedite their growth and achieve success.
Orbus Software has built much of its success on providing its customers with this information. For example, its headline platform – iServer365 – has been designed to give businesses full insight into their application portfolios for rationalisation and roadmapping purposes.
“Application rationalisation is the process of evaluating software applications used across an organisation with the purpose of simplifying complexity, removing redundancy and reducing the total cost of ownership of applications,” says Reda Gadiri, principal consultant at Orbus Software.
On the other hand, application roadmapping refers to the future plans of software applications based on the IT strategy, future business needs and cloud migration drivers.
“iServer365 helps users to reach a new level of data granularity when it comes to rationalisation and roadmapping,” says Gadiri. “It enables enterprise architects and application portfolio managers to capture, manage, analyse and visualise the entire application portfolio.”
And Orbus’s partners agree. Outcomes Based Association of South Africa (OBASA) began working with the company to become a more integrated and mature business.
“We also wanted an IT transformation tool that would enable our clients to make strategic, operational and tactical decisions to combat spiralling technology costs, improve visibility around compliance and security risks, and deliver clear technology roadmaps,” says Mankgopo Moroaswi (pictured), managing director at OBASA.
According to Gadiri, the iServer365 central repository also provides customers with a common data structure to define software applications and their business context, as well as the ability to synchronise that data from other systems in the organisation. In addition, it provides toolkits that empower application owners to maintain the details of their assets and conduct value assessments.
“These enable the visualisation of the application portfolio using out-of-the-box reports that highlight rationalisation candidates, cost-saving opportunities and areas of risk,” says Gadiri. “Based on those insights, enterprise architects can build application roadmaps in iServer365 to propose recommendations to business and IT leaders, enabling data-driven decision support.”
Using iServer365 has enabled OBASA to improve alignment between operations and business strategy. “With iServer365, our clients can now view their entire organisations at a glance, which is key to decision-making,” says Moroaswi.
This article was originally published in the Winter 2022 issue of Technology Record. To get future issues delivered directly to your inbox, sign up for a free subscription.