Applications are more powerful—and more expensive—than ever. That is why WashU IT adopted Ardoq, an enterprise architecture platform that enables the visualization of IT systems from different angles.
Ardoq can be used to visualize IT systems from different angles—like individual applications, how they connect, their importance, and who manages them.
As departments adopt increasingly sophisticated tools, the need for transparency has never been greater. Without a clear, university-wide view of what is in place, there is a real risk of overspending, duplicating efforts, and missing out on smarter solutions.
To keep information current, administrators can use Ardoq to create surveys that gather input from application leads and subject matter experts. Ardoq also makes it easy to build and share visual reports, dashboards, and presentations that can be accessed outside the platform. It provides functionality that supports Application Life Cycle Management (ALM), Application Rationalization, Application Risk Management, IT Cost Management, and Technical Debt Management.
Plans to integrate Ardoq with other systems, such as Workday, CMS, and ServiceNow are being developed.
Several initiatives are already underway within Ardoq and will be explained in greater detail during the September IT All Hands meeting. Some of those initiatives include:
- Application Inventory Management – Listing all applications used across the University, along with their owners, technical leads, and experts. This includes gathering application capabilities and operating expenses.
- InfoSec Application Criticality Survey – Assessing how essential each application is to university operations and disaster recovery planning.
- Application Rationalization – Examining our IT application portfolio(s) through a framework to identify opportunities to reduce IT risk and complexity as well as eliminate unnecessary functional overlaps.
- Integration Inventory – Listing and connecting all integrations with their respective sources, target systems, technical leads, and experts.
Ardoq supports the WashU IT Strategic Plan by helping design better solutions to promote data-driven decisions, improve security, and create a more connected IT environment. It also helps us understand customer needs.
The Enterprise Systems and Solutions (ESS) Solution Architecture team has already started working with WashU IT leaders and application owners to share the benefits of this effort and collect information. The next step is to expand this work to other departments and distributed IT groups across the University.
To learn more about how Ardoq, request access, or explore getting-started resources, please visit the Ardoq webpage.