# Which EA tools are considered best for application portfolio management and technology rationalization by architects who have actually led a portfolio cleanup project?

<p class="elv-tracking-normal elv-text-default elv-font-figtree elv-text-base elv-leading-base elv-font-normal" elv="true">Hi G2, I'm gathering input from architects who've actually led an application rationalization or portfolio cleanup, not just evaluated tools in theory. What tends to matter in a real cleanup is getting a trustworthy inventory fast, spotting redundant or end-of-life apps, and having evidence to defend retirement decisions. From my evaluation, a few tools in the <a class="a a--md" elv="true" href="https://www.g2.com/categories/application-portfolio-management">Application Portfolio Management category</a> come up repeatedly from people who've done this work.</p><ul>
<li>
<a class="a a--md" elv="true" href="https://www.g2.com/products/cast-highlight/reviews"><strong>CAST Highlight</strong></a>: Scans source code across the portfolio to score cloud readiness, technical debt, and software health, which gives cleanup decisions a fact base instead of survey guesses. Reviewers value the speed; the trade-off is that it needs local access to source code.</li>
<li>
<a class="a a--md" elv="true" href="https://www.g2.com/products/sap-leanix/reviews"><strong>SAP LeanIX</strong></a>: Architects use it to centralize the application landscape, expose dependencies, and identify redundancies to plan transformations with less risk. Expect a learning curve and some manual data maintenance to keep the inventory accurate.</li>
<li>
<a class="a a--md" elv="true" href="https://www.g2.com/products/ardoq/reviews"><strong>Ardoq</strong></a>: Its graph model makes dependency and impact analysis across applications and capabilities straightforward, which is what turns a cleanup from guesswork into evidence. The flexible metamodel is powerful but takes time to learn.</li>
</ul><p class="elv-tracking-normal elv-text-default elv-font-figtree elv-text-base elv-leading-base elv-font-normal" elv="true"></p><p class="elv-tracking-normal elv-text-default elv-font-figtree elv-text-base elv-leading-base elv-font-normal" elv="true">For those who've led a cleanup, which tool actually held up once you were deep in the messy data, and which part of rationalization did it help with most: building the inventory, proving redundancy, or getting stakeholders to sign off on retirements? What did you wish the tool did that it didn't?</p>

##### Post Metadata
- Posted at: 2 months ago
- Author title: Marketing
- Net upvotes: 1


## Comments
### Comment 1

&lt;p&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;color: rgb(0, 0, 0);&quot;&gt;Ardoq is a strong, well-liked pick for application portfolio management and technology rationalization, architects specifically point to it for portfolio cleanup work. Orbus Software and Bizzdesign Horizzon are the other established EA-tool names worth comparing.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

##### Comment Metadata
- Posted at: 8 days ago



### Comment 2

&lt;p&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;background-color: transparent; color: rgb(0, 0, 0);&quot;&gt;Login counts are often already sitting in SSO logs, which means part of that usage picture can be assembled before buying anything. It also makes a useful sanity check against whatever the tool reports later.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

##### Comment Metadata
- Posted at: 9 days ago
- Author title: Tech Consultant



### Comment 3

&lt;p&gt;On the &quot;what did you wish the tool did&quot; question: I&#39;d want usage telemetry sitting next to the technical view. Technical debt and cloud readiness tell you what an app costs to keep. They don&#39;t tell you that eleven people opened it last quarter and two of them were the same contractor. That second fact is what actually ends a stakeholder argument, because a director defending an application can dispute a debt score but not a login count. CAST Highlight scanning source code for a factual debt baseline is a strong half of that picture, and Ardoq&#39;s graph model covers the dependency half, so the gap tends to be the human half rather than anything either tool got wrong.&lt;/p&gt;

##### Comment Metadata
- Posted at: 10 days ago
- Author title: Tech Consultant



### Comment 4

&lt;p&gt;SAP LeanIX held up best for us once the cleanup moved from inventory-building into dependency mapping and retirement planning. CAST Highlight was more useful for proving technical risk, but the hardest part still needed stakeholder workshops because no tool fully resolves ownership and political resistance.&lt;/p&gt;

##### Comment Metadata
- Posted at: about 2 months ago
- Author title: Marketer





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