Organizations continue to spend upwards of 70% of their technology budgets in maintaining an existing inventory of applications, some of which are redundant and some of which have exceeded their useful life, and continue to consume resources without returning value. In order to turn the tide of IT expenditure toward innovation and business value, organizations need a clear inventory of applications, their interdependencies and related business processes. Organizations can use enterprise architecture and portfolio management approaches to get the required knowledge to streamline and rationalize the application portfolio to reduce redundancy, consolidate IT capabilities and define sound IT governance policies around application ownership and change initiatives. Organizations can also better analyze costs and determine how best to maximize the return on application investments.