Serena Software’s New, Updated Products Provide “Orchestrated IT”
Products extend IT process orchestration strategy beyond development into operations and it front office.
Note: ESJ’s editors carefully choose vendor-issued press releases about new or upgraded products and services. We have edited and/or condensed this release to highlight key features but make no claims as to the accuracy of the vendor's statements.
Serena Software is now shipping three products, and announced two products to ship in April, that automate, control, and instrument application development and operations processes to deliver DevOps and “Orchestrated IT,” which Serena defines as IT management systems that tie together existing tools into a process-driven human workflow. Orchestrated IT streamlines processes to deliver applications faster, improve IT service performance, and lower overall IT costs.
“Enterprise IT organizations that are forward-leaning and stocked with an abundance of tools need Orchestrated IT to improve the performance of the end-to-end IT supply chain, without throwing out what is working,” observed John Nugent, president and CEO of Serena Software.
Maximizing the value of Orchestrated IT often involves deploying new functional tools where none currently exists or upgrading from cumbersome or expensive legacy tools, though this is optional. Orchestrated IT spans Dev and Ops, with benefits for the burgeoning DevOps function. Serena’s vision and solutions now also extend into IT front-office functions such as service catalog, demand management, and IT management dashboards.
Serena Orchestrated IT Dashboard
The new Serena Orchestrated IT Dashboard, available now, brings actionable intelligence to the head of Dev, the head of Ops, and to their boss, the CIO. The Orchestrated IT Dashboard provides almost two dozen pre-defined metrics such as cycle times, queue sizes, wait times, and SLA performance. Configuration options make it easy to draw more metrics from Serena and non-Serena IT management tools, focusing on key performance indicators (KPIs) and traceability metrics.
Serena Service Manager
Recently awarded Pink Elephant’s IT Service Management (ITSM) “Innovation of the Year” award, Serena Service Manager leverages a process-based approach to tackling the current challenges around flexibility, visibility, and usability inherent in legacy ITSM solutions. The new Serena Service Manager 3 packs innovative features that further strengthen DevOps and foster greater collaboration around issue resolution and aid service level management.
Serena Service Manager 3 offers:
- Integrated ITSM and Release Management resulting in fewer failed changes
- Service-level-agreement tracking to help identify at-risk targets and speed corrective action
- Application version comparison to enable fail-proof ITSM upgrades
Serena Release Manager
Serena Release Manager 2.0 works with Serena Service Manager and leverages a process-based approach to provide one window to automate and control the release processes and deployments for mainframe and distributed platforms. The new Serena Release Manager solution is the bridge between Dev and Ops and leverages integrations with Serena Service Manager to achieve true DevOps collaboration.
Serena Release Manager 2 offers:
- Release Calendar shared with Serena Service Manager for scheduling operational and development changes into a common calendar and improving synergies between Dev and Ops
- Integration with Serena Orchestrated IT Dashboard to present release management KPIs and provide efficient reporting
- Improved release environment visibility arming Dev and Ops with the ability to track and manage release packages at the environment level.
New Products
Serena Requirements Manager, to ship next month, is an integrated suite that provides enterprise IT organizations comprehensive capabilities to define and manage requirements, from initial prototype to production release, reducing rework, accelerating development and ensuring complete requirements traceability. It offers out-of-the-box dashboard metrics and best-practice KPIs for higher quality requirements, requirements collaboration capabilities that enable accelerated review cycles, and orchestrated processes for prototype and requirements specification reviews to ensure continuous alignment between IT and the business.
The new Serena Demand Manager, also shipping in April, helps IT and business users prioritize IT projects, presenting alternative portfolio scenarios and optimizing resources to fulfill any type of IT demand. Serena Demand Manager’s pragmatic and intuitive interface represents fresh innovation in a stale IT governance market that has been hijacked by heavyweight PPM systems. It includes an orchestrated approval process to streamline prioritization, scoring, and resource estimation of all IT requests as well as executive views to help assess the real effort and costs for all demand (as well as determine the optimal portfolio of IT projects).
Pricing for Serena's Orchestrated IT solutions starts at $12,500 for 250 users. More information is available at www.serena.com.
The company also premiered Doug Serena, CIO, a video miniseries that follows a CIO as he reaps the benefits of Orchestrated IT to deliver massive economic advantage to his company. The first Webisode of can be viewed at www.Serena.com/DougSerenaCIO, with all new episodes to follow weekly.