Enterprise Resource Planning for Information Technology (ERP for IT, or ERP4IT) describes the automation of information technology (IT). Therefore ERP4IT focuses on automating IT itself and not on the automation of business processes by IT.
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Description
Accordingly, an entire ERP for IT approach and adequate solutions touch various IT disciplines such as:
The term Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) might be a little confusing because of the way it is used for business solutions. Enterprise resource planning software is software that can comprehensively manage the needs of a major enterprise resource area (money, productive capital, people, stock of goods or information). Of the major resource areas, only information (i.e. IT) lacks integrated vendor solutions such as those offered by SAP ERP or Oracle E-Business Suite for all the other resource areas.
Respectively, ERP4IT focuses on a broader sense as well as on the comprehensive integration of different modules like the ERP system do. ERP4IT provides a process centric solution in complex information structures, implemented in relational databases for the IT organization to manage the IT itself. Due to the given complexity of the domains involved, IT services should become transparent and enable the IT to manage organizational and technical dependencies. ERP4IT shows the cost but also the benefit of the provided services. They should be measurable and contribute as single parts to the overall business vision and strategy.
With the right foundation on industry standards, a de facto, federated, ERP4IT solution could start to emerge - that would radically improve the efficiency of enterprise IT.
Standards and software
Many companies have a wide range of nonintegrated solutions covering several aspects of IT Governance such as: Project Management, Portfolio Management, Time Management, Service Management, Enterprise Architecture, System Management, Security Management or Asset Management.
Unfortunately, to this day there are no known standards for such an integrative overall solution that supports what the emerging subject of ERP4IT claims to be. In the past there have been several proprietary attempts to solve various pieces of the IT puzzle.)
In Europe, ERP for IT and ERP4IT are registered community trademarks of Efecte Corp.