OREANDA-NEWS. September 2, 2011. Despite applications being a fundamental part of today’s IT landscape, over half of CIOs/IT directors in the UK have admitted that they do not have a complete view of what exists in their application portfolio nor how their portfolio is aligned to overall business need – an admission which exposes a worrying blind spot.

The research, commissioned by Fujitsu, surveyed CIOs and IT directors across the UK and reveals that two thirds of respondents felt that their applications portfolio was only partially aligned to their business strategy or not at all. Only 39 per cent said they had the right strategy to manage their organisations portfolio and more than half said they couldn’t demonstrate to their business that they have clear visibility of their applications portfolio.

The research reveals that organisations are failing to extract maximum value from existing applications. Nearly two thirds could not provide the true cost of running applications in their business. While nearly half (47 per cent) said they did not have the resources to ensure maximum value from their applications.

“At a time when IT budgets are being scrutinized and businesses are looking to technology to add value and agility, this level of unawareness around application portfolios is incredibly worrying,” explained Andrew Brabban, CTO Applications, Fujitsu. “The lack of understanding of how much the application portfolio is costing means that companies have no way of telling how much is being wasted. How many companies can afford to be running applications that are not delivering maximum value? Any hopes of applications becoming a strategic enabler for the business certainly seem a long way off for the majority of companies.”

Duplicate applications are also rife in UK organisations, further compounding the unnecessary cost and complexity associated with application management, with half saying the level of duplication was moderate to ‘too much’.

Finally in the area of applications development, nearly 75 per cent felt that the development and support of current applications was high on their organisations’ agenda. However over half still struggle to fund new application development projects (53 per cent), revealing a strong disconnect between business need and budgetary reality.