MEGA International introduces IT Planning Tool.

Enterprise Architecture Road Mapping Capability Aids in Resource Allocation 

RAYNHAM, Mass. -- MEGA International today introduced MEGA IT Planning, a road mapping tool that helps enterprises plan, model, and visualize technology resources to make well-informed decisions about IT asset acquisition, management, and retirement.

MEGA IT Planning is the latest addition to the MEGA Modeling Suite, a proven, comprehensive enterprise architecture and business process analysis solution.

It is an important new industry resource for strategic IT planning, to improve asset allocation, cost savings, and control of the evolution of IT systems. MEGA IT Planning meets a rapidly-emerging need to quickly understand the effects of multiple changes to IT resources, such as necessary software upgrades, discontinued products, or potential price changes.

Unlike other enterprise architecture offerings that don't offer IT planning solutions, or IT planning tools that don't offer comprehensive enterprise architecture and business process analysis capacity, the MEGA Modeling Suite now offers the full range of capabilities that are essential to clarify how the business and IT demands affect each other.

With the new tool, architects can model master plans of IT systems to obtain time-dependent views of application, service, and IT asset portfolio management. Comparing new and existing master plans, along with impact analysis, produces accurate forecasting of organizational and financial effects of change within the IT environment. Users can evaluate and compare multiple as-is and to-be scenarios concerning the evolution of the whole range of enterprise IT assets (such as applications, services, servers, etc.). As a result, enterprises can better align IT investments with business strategy.

"Enterprise architects increasingly use road maps as essential graphics for technology planning and synchronizing business planning with technology strategy. With virtually no option other than the manual construction of road maps, architects are creating significant maintenance burdens for themselves O Architects today use EA tools to build as-is and to-be models. But an increasing number of architects and IT strategists tell Forrester that they need additional tooling for IT planning. They want to represent the multiple intermediary steps, represented by projects, scenarios, and instances of technology adoption, that will lead them from the current as-is model to an always-evolving to-be model," noted the Forrester report, Tooling EA Road Maps, published January 10, 2008.

"IT architects have traditionally developed road maps using project management, spreadsheet, or graphics packages, which are ineffective within a complex, ever-changing portfolio of IT assets. These packages lack the necessary level of automation and integration to update and maintain information effectively or securely, and put at risk essential collaboration, fact-based decision-making, and competitive performance," explained Lucio de Risi, CEO of MEGA International.

MEGA IT Planning stores plans in a centralized repository, an important feature for enterprise architects in large corporations who need to share and synchronize many aspects of planning. The repository helps guarantee the traceability and consistency required for the effective planning and management of resources within increasingly heterogeneous IT environments. Because the same up-to-date information is stored and accessible throughout the enterprise, it reduces the time and resources needed to manage vast IT systems and provides a much higher level of security for sensitive data.

MEGA IT Planning may be used independently of other modules in the MEGA Modeling Suite to achieve dedicated IT planning, or it can be used in conjunction with them to conduct comprehensive enterprise architecture and business process analysis. The MEGA Modeling Suite provides visibility into business operations, helping organizations anticipate trends, manage market changes, and reduce unknowns, delays, and costs.

MEGA International (www.mega.com) offers the MEGA Modeling Suite for enterprise architecture and business process analysis, and the MEGA GRC Suite for governance, risk, and compliance. It is a privately-held company, founded in 1991, with 50,000 software licenses worldwide. Clients include AT&T, DirecTV, Enterprise Rent-a-Car, Morgan Stanley, NASA, Nissan, and Wyeth, and the US Departments of Agriculture, Homeland Security, and Transportation.