Cloud in 2011: Serena Speeds ALM, Provisioning for On-Premise, Cloud Apps 
Serena Software’s latest one-two punch looks to bring dramatic improvements to application lifecycle management and IT service management (ITSM) for on-premise, cloud and even projects that use the cloud in development but are meant to deploy on-premise.
Serena Software’s latest one-two punch looks to bring dramatic improvements to ALM and ITSM for on-premise, cloud and even projects that use the cloud in development but are meant for on-premise deployment.
In November, Serena will ship an updated Release Manager to better help speed application provisioning and updates for cloud and on-premise apps. The company is also shipping, Serena Service Manager, a new ITSM solution, deployed either on-premise or in the cloud, to improve the impact and efficiency of service desks.
“Serena Service Manager is something the ITSM market hasn’t seen before, a process-based, visually configurable system,” said David Hurwitz, Serena’s senior vice president of worldwide marketing in a statement. “Combined with the new Serena Release Manager 2 solution, Serena is truly bridging the gap between development and operations.”
“This year, delivering applications faster took over as the top priority.”
Adam Frankl
VP for Community Marketing
Serena Software
Serena Release Manager 2.0 updates the company’s end-to-end release management solution to speed-up the application delivery process. It also introduces a new visual enterprise release calendar for both devs and IT operations.
The update to Release Manager also sports a common governance process and a consolidated release. These two features aim to enable users to better plan, control and automate application releases with complete visibility. The approach will support both planned and emergency releases.
In a typical use case, teams from development and operations can better plan and document releases through a visual calendar and drill down into any release train for additional details, according to Hurwitz. Release manager 2.0’s calendar reports both dev and ops updates to all affected stakeholders to improve collaboration and streamline deployment times.
Serena Service Manager brings a process model to better sync up people, processes and services – and better link different stakeholders together across the lifecycle. The goal is better orchestrated service management; faster issue resolution; and more flexibility, visibility and usability, Hurwitz said.
Serena Service Manager comes with an easily configurable and flexible process-based approach to improve overall visibility into incidents, problems and changes, increase customer satisfaction and drive down service desk costs. To further promote visibility across stakeholders, it also includes unified service portal and integrated service dashboards.
Under the covers, notable features of Serena Service Manager include:
Flexible Process-Based Approach. Provides service management processes that encapsulate ITIL best practices, and allow customers to adjust processes to their needs using easily configurable forms and screens.
Integrated Visibility. An integrated CMDB (configuration management database) to help IT better manage and control infrastructure changes and also deliver contextual information to speed incident and problem investigation. This approach results in timely, contextual reports about process, audit trails, and ITIL-based service desk metrics to improve service delivery across the lifecycle.
Unified Service View for Business Users. Business users are presented a “single view” of all the services available to them via a unified service request portal and service catalog. This interface allows them to easily order services, track status of requests and access a help-driven knowledge base.
Serena’s latest ALM and ITSM products follows a survey the company released earlier this year that found that for 2011 IT priorities had dramatically shifted – from a long-held desire to cut costs in application development to now delivering applications faster.
“Over the last three years, reducing costs was the response that outweighed everything else. But this year, delivering applications faster took over as the top priority,” Adam Frankl, Serena’s vice president for corporate and community marketing, told IDN earlier this year. “I take from this that customers are ready to start investing in applications again, and rather than simply cutting costs, they are motivated to solve business needs.”
