Case Study: Continental Automotive achieves integrated IT portfolio visibility and standardization with Software AG's alfabet

Continental identifies 10 percent of apps to retire by using integrated portfolio management

Continental Automotive, the automotive division of Germany-based Continental, supplies components across five divisions and grew rapidly through 12 major acquisitions. That growth left a fragmented, hard-to-oversee IT landscape with multiple legacy systems, undocumented servers and overlapping applications, making it difficult for architects to understand and manage the portfolio.

Working with alfabet’s planningIT, Continental established a central application repository, assigned application ownership, integrated SAP into the repository and identified about 10% of applications for retirement. By agreeing functional standards and a new portfolio strategy (evaluating business contribution, cost, risk and quality), the company gained clear visibility into strategic applications, improved standardization and IT planning, and enabled better real-time decision-making across the business.

Continental Automotive

Claus Thiede

Executive Chief Architect