Start-up Finalizes Suite of IT Management Apps

Computerworld - Start-up vendor ITM Software Corp. has completed the development of an integrated suite of IT management applications that early users and analysts said is something akin to an ERP system for CIOs.
The ITM Business Suite is a set of five software modules designed to help IT executives manage vendor relationships, project portfolios and the process of aligning internal IT skills with business needs. Last month, the Mountain View, Calif.-based company added an IT governance and regulatory compliance application and formally announced the entire suite.
The ITM Governance and Compliance Management module can be used to document corporate IT processes and ensure that they aid efforts to comply with the Sarbanes-Oxley Act and other regulations, the company said. The software supports the use of standard governance models, such as the IT Infrastructure Library and the Control Objectives for Information and Related Technology, or CobiT.
Dennis Gaughan, an analyst at AMR Research Inc. in Boston, said software for managing IT governance activities and portfolios of technology projects is available from several other vendors, including Changepoint Corp., Mercury Interactive Corp. and Niku Corp.
Soliciting Feedback
But over the past 18 months, ITM has solicited detailed feedback from more than 150 CIOs on functionality they'd like to see in its suite, Gaughan added.
"ITM does a better job of customer partnering than any vendor I've ever worked with," said Madeleine Fackler, vice president of information management and CIO at LifeScan Inc., a Milpitas, Calif.-based subsidiary of Johnson & Johnson that makes blood-glucose monitoring systems. "Other software companies have asked me for my feedback, but not with the level of discussion that they had."
ITM began beta-testing its technology in late 2002, and LifeScan installed the vendor's base module early last year. This month, it plans to start deploying the vendor relationship management application, Fackler said.
The software will run on a Linux-based application server that's equipped with BEA Systems Inc.'s WebLogic middleware and connects to a report server running Windows 2000. Fackler said she plans to evaluate the IT governance application after the rollout of the vendor relationship module.
Kevin Kryzda, CIO for the government of Martin County, Florida, said his IT department is deploying ITM's project portfolio module and expects to start running the software on either Sun Solaris or Red Hat Linux this month.
Martin County, which is on the Atlantic coast about halfway between Miami and Orlando, began restructuring its IT department three years ago. In doing so, "we wanted to make sure we were measuring how effectively we weremeeting business objectives," Kryzda said. ITM's software should help support that goal, he added.
For IT departments with 50 to 100 workers, ITM's pricing starts at about $100,000 for the base module and one application. The software supports Oracle databases and can run on Windows, Linux and Solaris operating systems.