Glossary

IT Landscape
IT Landscape Model
IT Management

An IT-Landscape is the set of IT applications of an organisation together with the necessary IT infrastructure (from the host to the smartphone). Planning, analysis and monitoring of IT landscapes is the task of IT Management.

An IT Landscape Model depicts an IT Landscape as layered sets of model elements and their interrelationships together. Important layers of an IT landscape model are the business layer (modeling business processes and business objects), the application layer (modeling IT services and their interfaces) and the physical layer (modeling the entities of the IT infrastructure, like servers and networks). IT landscape models are the basis for analysing an IT Landscape, e.g. concerning requirements to the availability of IT services or concerning the maturity of IT support of a business process. .

IT Management is concerned with planning, analysing, operating and improving IT Landscapes and the IT service management. Among the responsibilities of IT managers are to align IT services with the business strategy and business processes of the organisation, to improve corporate efficiency and effectiveness, to enable and support new business models, innovative products and services, to use resources efficiently, to comply with legal regulations, to identify risks and to protect the organisation´s assets. IT management in practice is supported by standards and best practices (e.g. ITIL, Cobit, ISO 20000, key performance indicator frameworks) and uses IT Landscape Models Verwendung.