Software tool provider Serena has announced a new Release Management solution as part of its new “Orchestrated ALM” vision.
Release Management features three components: Release Control for BPM, Release Vault for change management and version control, and Release Automation (created through a partnership with Nolio) for server management.
According to Adam Frankl, Serena’s vice president of corporate and community marketing, “The application delivery landscape has changed as roles have exploded. It’s not just developers, testers and business analysts anymore. Now, there’s a project management office, operations, release management, C-level stakeholders and customers. They all have a critical role in application delivery.”
As the demand on developers grows with changing business requirements and more frequent requests for new applications and updates, release management “becomes a process problem, not an artifact issue,” Frankl said. “You need to manage it as a business process by defining the process, collecting data at every step and making decisions based on that data.”
Organizations often face the two-headed problem of technical decisions being made by businesspeople and business decisions being made by technical people. “If an application fails a business use case, it’s not up to the tech side to solve that problem,” said Frankl. “It has to be bubbled back up to a business executive to make a decision on how to proceed.”
Likewise, he said, business executives should not be making technical decisions about the best way to bring forth a new solution. It’s about the process, he stressed. “Without a process, you can’t possibly audit what’s going on or plan for end-to-end orchestration.”
Release Management makes up a part of the company’s “Orchestrated ALM” vision, joining Serena Demand Management, which handles requirements and request management and portfolio analysis; and Serena Development Management, for change and configuration management, project management and quality control. The Release Management suite sells for US$125,000; each component sells individually for $50,000.
Within Release Management, Release Control is the evolution of Serena’s TeamTrack product, Frankl said. Release planning, calendaring, tracking and approvals are handled in this software.
The Release Vault, Frankl said, is “the gold repository” for code, in which automated rollback and version control take place. This is built on the company’s Dimensions product.
Release Automation replaces scripts through the use of Nolio’s Application Service Automation Platform for deployment, maintenance, repair and recovery. “You can see what was installed, when the servers were shut down for the install, when they came back up, and the like,” Frankl said.
One-click deployment reduces the risk of release failure, Frankl said, while the dashboards and KPIs across all tools provide deep end-to-end traceability and visibility.
