Serena Software Releases Mainframe Tools

OEMed by IBM

• By Chris McConnell
• 03/26/2002

Taking the next step in their two decades of mainframe support, Serena Software Inc. released new tools for mainframe development Tuesday. The enhancements to the Serena StarTool Family Product Suite are designed to reduce the time developers and administrators spend fixing problems.

Serena is releasing new versions of Serena StarTool FDM (File and Data Manager) and StarTool APM (Application Performance Manager). Earlier this year it issued updates for other StarTool family members, including StarTool I/O Optimizer and StarTool Dump Analyzer.

Serena StarTool FDM allows administrators to build databases by stripping out the contents of files and indexing it with the database server. The tool particularly supports IBM Corp.’s IMS database server, which Serena’s Calvin Ross says is used in most production enterprises today. StarTool FDM’s extraction, transformation, and loading features are also compatible with DB2.

Administrators can use StarTool APM to monitor applications and detect issues that degrade performance. The software is designed to find bottlenecks and can enable administrators to drill down to the source code in order to fix the problem.

Serena also announced IBM would resell its StarTool APM with the mainframe line. Ross believes this is part of Big Blue’s overall strategy for the mainframe. “IBM is OEMing Serena software to keep customers’ costs down,” he says.