Kintana Inc., a maker of IT portfolio-management software, has upgraded its product suite to include applications for managing resources, project time, and financials.

Kintana IT Governance Suite 5.0 is designed to help CIOs and other executives maximize IT business value, optimize delivery of IT services, and reduce costs. One early user of 5.0 is utility company Xcel Energy Inc. Xcel has been using Kintana's software since December to identify potential IT projects and evaluate the business case for each one in areas such as design requirements, risk, and financial benefit. "It's become our collaboration point [on IT] for all of the different organizations in the company," says Mike Carlson, the company's director of business transformation. Kintana serves as a repository for documents and approvals related to IT investments, he says.

Among the new applications in 5.0, Xcel is using Kintana Financial Manager for cost metrics and budgets for IT projects. Also included in the suite is Resource Manager, an app for helping companies manage information on IT worker skills and planning.

In the coming months, Carlson says, Xcel plans to use Kintana get a better handle on discretionary IT spending. A recent evaluation of one business division revealed that $4 million had been spent on IT in a three-month time frame, but some of those investments didn't receive the executive-level scrutiny they should have because they fell under a loose guideline of less than 200 IT hours for project completion. "With Kintana, what we're excited about is the ability to put business gates into the process and catch what has an opportunity to be managed better," Carlson says. Xcel spends up to $150 million annually on IT capital and another $100 million on IT operations; it plans to reduce the latter figure by 15% through better management of discretionary investments, says Carlson.

Kintana also is shopping its suite as a solution to helping IT executives comply with the Sarbanes-Oxley Act.