The new suite, Dimensions 10, was two years in the making, and is being rolled out six months after the company was taken private. Serena’s moves come as part of a strategy to broaden from its roots in source code control and change management to application lifecycle management (ALM).
Dimensions 10, integrates source code control and requirements management around a common repository, and uses the Eclipse Application Lifecycle Framework (ALF) project as the glue to plug in results from third-party tools used in other parts of the development life cycle.
Of course, this is hardly a complete ALM solution. But then again, aside from IBM Rational, nobody has anything that comes close to covering most stages of the application life cycle. Furthermore, IBM’s drawback is that its tools are not consistently integrated, and that the team tools forming the heart of its offering are based on architectures that are over a decade old.
Serena claims that Dimensions is designed so it can be used in midsize organizations, where there are perhaps a couple of dozen developers, or in large enterprises, involving thousands of licenses.
Like most players vying for the ALM space, Serena largely acquired its way in. But like smaller rival MKS Inc, which is slightly further down the path, Serena is integrating its tooling around a common repository engine.
As can be deduced from the name, the new offering is based around Dimensions, the distributed source code control, and change management product line that came with the Merant acquisition a couple of years back. For Dimensions 10, Serena extended the underlying repository to cover artifacts from requirements management that came from the RTM product purchased from Integrated Chipware roughly a year ago.
It rounded the new offering out with tooling for automating software builds and deployment. And capping things off, it added a project dashboard that is a placeholder for project portfolio management capability (PPM) that it will either develop or acquire in the foreseeable future.
Excluding the Eclipse ALF framework for tying in third-party offerings, Serena’s strategy is remarkably similar to MKS. Both companies began around source control, then added requirements management, and subsequently plan to add PPM (MKS has already taken the first steps). The other major difference is that, courtesy of Serena’s established mainframe business and the acquired Merant’s PVCS department-level product, Serena has a much larger presence.
Of course, Serena can’t afford to abandon its existing bases. So alongside Dimensions 10, it still offers and supports ZMF, its mainframe change management offering; TeamTrack defect tracking; and of course, the venerable PVCS entry-level source control product.
Clearly, with ALF, Serena has planted its feet in the Eclipse camp. Although it offers native plug-ins to both Eclipse and Visual Studio, at this point it is not planning offerings that link with Microsoft’s emerging Visual Studio Team System (VSTS).
Of course, a major question is whether the organization is up to selling the new product. With the leeway of private ownership, sales staff are now on annual quotas, which helps when it comes to closing long life cycle sales like ALM suites. While the telesales staff will still focus on point products, Mr Woodward said that direct sales would be dedicated to suites, and that they would be equally compensated for new licenses, maintenance and services (an arrangement that is unusual in software firms).
Additionally, because ALM requires more customer hand-holding and mentoring, Serena is upping its professional services business.
On the horizon, Serena intends to inflate its project dashboard into a more full-blooded project portfolio management capability. And Mr Woodward indicated that another acquisition was likely in the foreseeable future.
