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alfabet Announces Release 6.0 of planningIT for Business IT Management

This release includes major new features for improving collaboration with business such as Business Architecture Management and Business Reporting as well as Information Historization for understanding trends in how architecture and strategy change over time.

"This release raises the bar for Business IT Management with many new significant enhancements and innovations added to help IT decision makers effectively plan, visualize and manage IT change in alliance with business stakeholders," said Erik Masing, CEO and founder of alfabet. "We're confident this new release will be exceptionally well received by our customers and partners and will further extend our technology leadership in Business IT Management."

Release 6.0 Highlights:

History Tracking - Architecture, Strategy and Portfolio Evolution: In its work with customers on the leading edge of Business IT Management, alfabet has learned that there is a great need for the ability to analyze the behavior of strategy and architecture over time and to decipher normalities, anomalies and trends. planningIT Release 6.0 introduces History Tracking for strategy, enterprise architecture and the many portfolios relevant to the Business IT Management arena. The new release automatically documents and tracks changes made to any of the objects in the Business IT Management domain providing the basis for comprehensive reporting on how the architecture and plans have changed over time.

Business Architecture Management: planningIT Release 6.0 introduces groundbreaking new functionality to allow business stakeholders to articulate what drives change into business and to document and manage the change. This makes it possible, for example, to detect conflicts in the plans from different business units early on instead of when IT is already deep into the implementation projects.

Business Graphics: Visualization is important in communicating with business, and planningIT Release 6.0 now makes it possible to express portfolio behavior in simple business graphics. Complementing planningIT's existing object query approach, a new native SQL report type allows tabular reports to be specified using native SQL and directly access the underlying database structure. The queries are then translated by planningIT into meaningful business graphics.

Improved Business Support Management: planningIT's Master Planning capabilities are used as a core planning facility, yet large IT organizations are challenged with the efficient management of massive amounts of business supports which may reach up to 100,000 in a globally operating company. planningIT 6.0 makes this greatly more efficient with the introduction of specifically designed matrix-based management.

Enhanced Object Relationship Management: Along the same lines, planningIT Release 6.0 offers matrix-based capture and maintenance of relationship information. Objects that are permissible for relationship building are placed on the matrix axes and reports clearly demonstrate the intersections of those objects. This new function supports mass information management as typically found in application and information portfolio management.

Cluster Maps: Continuing on the efforts to provide new innovative visualization to the market, Release 6.0 introduces Cluster Maps. Cluster maps show report results in levels of nested boxes displayed in a layered diagram. These can be colored based on flexibly configurable rules and be associated with indicators which are based on configurable rules as well.

Release 6.0 of planningIT is available immediately on a subscription basis or perpetual license model. More detailed information can be downloaded at: http://www.alfabet.com/products/current_release.

About alfabet (www.alfabet.com)

alfabet enables companies to strategically plan and manage their IT to realize business goals. Its planningIT software is unique in tightly coupling business priorities and IT deliverables with current and future initiatives. Competitive point solutions offer modeling or repository functions with a static view of priorities, architecture and infrastructure. alfabet provides a holistic, integrated and collaborative approach that offers continuous transparency into how IT and business information, processes and roles are changing and need to be managed over time.

The company serves a global user community of 40,000 IT professionals in more than 40 countries in a variety of industries, including automotive, financial services, telecommunications, logistics, high-tech and others. alfabet's customers include international corporations such as Credit Suisse, Munich Reinsurance, BMW, AXA Winterthur, Deutsche Bahn, OCBC and T-Systems. Founded in 1997, alfabet is based in Berlin with U.S. headquarters in Cambridge, Mass.

All companies and products listed herein are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective holders.

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