Serena Software has ended its period in the wilderness with a new process-driven approach to application delivery that introduces a new ALM solution strategy focused on federation and orchestration. After a couple of years of mixed corporate messages with the company attempting to reinvent itself as a mashups specialist, the company appears to have come back to its configuration management roots with a total offering that focuses on automated end-to-end application delivery.
Analysts generally agree that delivering applications that power revenue generation or lower cost structures is the key to creating a compelling competitive advantage, especially given that virtualization and the cloud are commoditizing run-time environments.
Given the stakes, Serena has built its orchestration approach around the application of process automation to the application delivery supply chain, potentially allowing software developers to work more effectively and reduce the challenges of siloed project teams working with multiple development tools and methodologies.
Serena claims that its orchestrated ALM solution provides built-in traceability and auditability and also addresses another enterprise concern: the need to support the various tiers of today’s applications running on Linux, Windows, and mainframe.
"Orchestration is the key to enterprise-class application delivery success," said David Hurwitz, SVP of worldwide marketing at Serena Software. "Our customers need to streamline workflows, leverage their valuable talent, and exploit their existing infrastructure. They’ve overwhelmingly told us that flowing work and insight to developers, analysts, executives, operations managers, and everyone else involved in the application lifecycle is the right approach. No ALM vendor has stepped up to this challenge, until now."
"By creating a 'software supply chain,' companies can increase efficiencies around globally distributed software and provide an end-to-end, integrated approach to software development," said Thomas Murphy, research director at Gartner.
