Serena Aims for Cloud Computing Hat Trick

SAN MATEO, Calif.—Having last year announced its intent to delve into the world of software as a service computing, Serena Software now says it will score a "hat trick" this year by providing portfolio management, business mashups and an agile development environment in the cloud.

Rene Bonvanie, senior vice president of worldwide marketing, partner programs and online services, said Serena will launch three solutions via SAAS: the Serena Mariner PPM (project and portfolio management) software solution; the Serena Business Mashups solution; and the new Serena ALM (Application Lifecycle Management) Agile tools.

Bonvanie, who met with eWEEK at Serena's headquarters here on Feb. 27 prior to the company's move to Redwood City, Calif., said that SAAS provides significant benefits for companies, such as "no infrastructure to manage, no software to install, faster time to value and simple subscription pricing."  

SMBs are stumbling onto SAAS adoption. Click here to read the story.

Bonvanie said that the first product to go SAAS will be Serena Mariner, which will be available on demand within the next 30 days. Serena Mariner provides total visibility into project status and metrics to ensure the right people are on the right projects at the right time, ultimately delivering more value to the business, Bonvanie said.

Pricing for the PPM solution on demand will start at $18 per user per month, Bonvanie said. Serena Mariner gives business analysts a way to manage their entire portfolio quickly and easily without creating unwieldy spreadsheets in Excel. All Serena products delivered via SAAS will have published pricing and discount schedules, Bonvanie said.

Moreover, "there will be integration between our agile and PPM environments," Bonvanie said. "There will be common components and a common platform," he said of the PPM offering, which is expected to become available on March 31.

"PPM in the cloud will enable users to handle management of people, money, skills, etc.," Bonvanie said. "I envision this being used by companies of all sizes. The technology has been with us for a year through our acquisition of Pacific Edge."  

SMBs that go the SAAS route should make some demands to mitigate the inherent challenges. Click here to check out your Bill of SAAS Rights.

A Forrester research report on the PPM market ranked Serena's Mariner solution as a competitive offering and said that it "scores high in pure portfolio management."

According to the report, "Mariner retains its position as a solid middle-of-the-pack PPM performer, having earlier absorbed Pacific Edge. Mariner's strengths lie in both portfolio and resource management."

However, in order to compete long term, Serena's Mariner solution "must become a player in integrated IT management and continue to broaden its base of application technologies," the Forrester report said.