Many organizations rely on geospatial technology to derive insights based on location and spatial relationship. Whether they are mapping infrastructure, analyzing environmental changes, or optimizing logistics, managing geospatial investments effectively is imperative. Two strategies, IT portfolio management and IT rationalization, can help organizations maximize the value of their geospatial assets while reducing inefficiencies. Leveraging the right tools and techniques ensures these strategies are implemented effectively.
When we talk about “geospatial investments,” we are talking about infrastructure, software, and data. Assets in those categories may be acquired through proprietary licenses, subscriptions such as SaaS or DaaS, or by onboarding open-source solutions. Regardless of the provenance of the asset, its acquisition and incorporation into operations brings costs that must be managed like any other investments.
What Is IT Portfolio Management?
IT portfolio management is a structured process for evaluating and aligning IT assets, including geospatial tools and data, with organizational goals. Think of it like managing a financial portfolio—prioritizing investments to maximize returns while managing risks.
In practice, effective IT portfolio management involves a combination of strategic planning, resource allocation, and continuous assessment. Organizations leverage portfolio management to ensure IT investments, including geospatial tools and data, align with long-term objectives while remaining adaptable to changing priorities. This often entails mapping projects to business outcomes, identifying dependencies, and evaluating performance metrics to measure success. Additionally, fostering collaboration between IT and operational teams enhances decision-making, ensuring geospatial initiatives address both technical and organizational needs. By applying these principles, organizations can maximize the value of their geospatial assets while mitigating risks associated with resource misallocation or misaligned goals.
Tools and Techniques for Geospatial Portfolio Management
- Portfolio Management Software:
- Tools like Planview, SailPoint, or Smartsheet can help track geospatial technology assets. Some integrate with ERP systems to identify spend. This is useful for tracking commercial software licenses, subscriptions, and even support contracts from open-source tools. They can be especially useful for identifying “shadow IT” in which staff onboard SaaS tools and then expense the subscription fees.
- Mobile Device Management (MDM) tools such as JAMF or JumpCloud can be effective at tracking or deploying software on managed devices. This can help with license optimization for commercial software, patch management for commercial and open-source tools, or data inventory management at the edge.
- Geospatial Data Inventory:
- Prioritization Frameworks:
- Weighted Scoring Models enable the use of organization-specific criteria to provide consistent evaluation of alternatives.
- Benefit-Cost Analysis provides a relatively simple way to objectively evaluate and rank geospatial investments.
By utilizing these tools and techniques, organizations can align their geospatial investments with business goals and make data-driven decisions.
What Is IT Rationalization?
IT rationalization focuses on simplifying and streamlining IT assets to eliminate redundancy and reduce costs. It requires a systematic approach to evaluate the relevance, efficiency, and performance of IT assets. It involves cataloging all technology assets, assessing their value and usage, and identifying areas of overlap or obsolescence. For geospatial technology, this process includes analyzing the lifecycle of geospatial tools, evaluating data quality and relevance, and determining the efficiency of current workflows. Organizations often use rationalization to create a unified technology ecosystem by consolidating systems, integrating data sources, and phasing out redundant or underperforming applications. This ensures that geospatial investments support operational needs while reducing costs and improving overall agility.
Geospatial rationalization involves a systematic approach to streamlining geospatial technology and data assets, ensuring they align with organizational goals while reducing inefficiencies and costs. The process begins with inventorying assets using tools like an MDM platform or Voyager, which can track software, hardware, and data. Identifying redundancies is a critical next step, where tools like FME or Voyager can uncover duplicate data for cleanup, while GDAL/OGR standardizes and consolidates diverse datasets to ensure consistency. Migration and consolidation further enhance efficiency by moving geospatial data to modern, scalable platforms like Apache Sedona with Spark, PostGIS, or a data warehouse, often leveraging ELT/ETL tools.
Application rationalization frameworks help organizations evaluate and classify geospatial applications for retention or retirement. Finally, performance monitoring tools like ensure applications operate efficiently, allowing for proactive identification of bottlenecks and optimization of resources. Together, these steps enable organizations to create a unified, cost-effective geospatial technology ecosystem tailored to their operational needs.
Challenges of Geospatial Technology in Portfolio Management and Rationalization
Managing and rationalizing geospatial tools and data present unique challenges due to the specialized nature and complexity of these systems. For instance, the vast volumes and diverse formats of geospatial data—such as vector layers, satellite imagery, and real-time sensor feeds—require robust storage and processing solutions. Organizations often grapple with ensuring data integrity, accessibility, and compatibility, especially when datasets come in formats like shapefiles, GeoJSON, or KML. For example, a municipality managing urban planning projects might need to consolidate data from various sources into a unified format using tools like GDAL/OGR. Apache Sedona, integrated with Spark in a data lake employing a medallion architecture, provides an efficient framework for managing large-scale geospatial datasets. This architecture allows organizations to organize raw data into bronze, silver, and gold layers, enabling a scalable and structured approach to data cleansing, integration, and analysis while maintaining high performance and flexibility.
Another significant concern is aligning tools and resources with organizational priorities while managing costs and governance. Differing project requirements can lead to overlapping software tools. For example multiple desktop GIS software or mobile data collection platforms can exist across a portfolio. Additionally, ensuring data governance is important, particularly when handling sensitive geospatial information, such as infrastructure as-built data or parcel boundaries. For instance, a transportation agency may use GeoNetwork to manage metadata securely while employing encryption and role-based access controls to comply with privacy regulations. Collaboration platforms, such as ArcGIS Enterprise or GeoNode, can help bring together diverse stakeholders—urban planners, emergency responders, and environmental analysts—by centralizing geospatial data and tools, fostering better alignment, and ensuring efficient resource utilization.
Conclusion
Geospatial technology is critical for modern organizations but presents unique challenges that demand careful management. Combining geospatial tools with standard strategies for handling data volume, interoperability, and governance, organizations can streamline their geospatial systems and integrate geospatial assets into larger organizational governance frameworks. IT portfolio management and rationalization not only optimize costs but also ensure geospatial investments align with strategic goals, delivering long-term value.
To learn more about how Cercana can help you optimize your geospatial portfolio, contact us.