Serena Software, the leader in orchestrated application delivery, IT and business processes, today announced new solutions to help organizations close the gap between application development and IT operations. Unlike legacy IT Service Management (ITSM) tools that are forms and data driven, Serena Service Manager is a brand new solution that provides the industry an easily configurable and flexible process-based approach to delivering IT services, along with a unified service portal and integrated service management dashboards.

Built on the experience of 300 worldwide customers already using Serena products to orchestrate IT services, including CACI, List Group, NCCI Holdings, SunGard, AKD (the Croatian version of US Bureau of Engraving and Printing), WebMD and Worthington Industries, Serena Service Manager syncs people, processes and services to improve overall visibility into incidents, problems and changes, increase customer satisfaction and drive down service desk costs.

Today, Serena also announced Serena Release Manager 2. The major new release, generally available in November, dramatically speeds application delivery and introduces a new visual enterprise release calendar for both application development and IT operations. Serena Release Manager 2 will be fully integrated with Serena Service Manager. The new solutions further build on Serena’s Orchestrated Application Delivery product strategy unveiled last year.

Serena Service Manager Orchestrates IT Service Management 
Serena Service Manager is the only ITSM offering on the market today that leverages a process-based approach. Linking people with process in orchestrated service management, Serena tackles the current challenges around flexibility, visibility and usability inherent in legacy ITSM solutions. With Serena Service Manager – which can be deployed from the cloud or on-premises – IT organizations can lower Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) for their service desk solutions and speed up issue resolution with full visibility across the service lifecycle. This improves user satisfaction and reduces “backdoor” requests to IT for support by providing a unified, easy-to-navigate end user service request portal.

The new Serena Service Manager solution offers:
• A Flexible, Process-Based Approach: Serena Service Manager provides customers with service management processes that encapsulate ITIL best practices. Customers can graphically change these processes to match their unique way of addressing constantly changing business demands – without having to rely on an army of vendor consultants. Intuitive, easily configurable forms and screens result in a lower learning curve and improved agent productivity. Over 300 Serena customers have achieved significant return on investment by leveraging the underlying process platform to automate IT service management, as well as other core IT and business processes.
• Integrated Visibility: The new ITSM solution provides an integrated Configuration Management Database (CMDB), which provides greater control over infrastructure changes by delivering contextual information that speeds incident and problem investigation. Timely, contextual reports about the process, audit trails, and ITIL-based service desk metrics also ensure IT organizations get visibility across the service delivery lifecycle.
• A Single, Friendly End User View: Serena Service Manager gives business users a single view of all the services available to them through a unified service request portal and service catalog. They can easily order services, track the status of their requests and have knowledge base articles proactively suggested to them as they submit tickets, thereby reducing service desk call volumes and the number of times users bypass Level 1 agents.

Introducing Next-Generation Serena Release Manager Solution
Serena Release Manager is a proven, end-to-end release management solution that
speeds the overall application delivery process. Serena Release Manager 2 is the industry’s only release management solution that enables users to plan, control and automate application releases with complete visibility. The major new version provides a common governance process and a consolidated release calendar for planning and controlling all release trains, including both planned and emergency releases.

With Serena Release Manager 2, Development and Operations teams can better plan and document releases through a visual calendar and drill down into any release train for additional details. Both application and operational updates in the release calendar are automatically communicated to all impacted stakeholders for improved collaboration, streamlined deployment times and increased governance.

Webcast Series: Orchestrating Dev and Ops

Serena plans a series of free webcasts, two with Forrester Research analysts, discussing best practices in IT operations. Serena Service Manager and Serena Release Manager 2 will be showcased.
• October 4, 2011: Serena product experts will cover five game-changing ways Serena Service Manager and Serena Release Manager help bridge the gap between Dev and Ops. The experts will highlight key product capabilities and do a live demonstration of the newest Serena solutions.
• October 11, 2011: Evelyn Hubbert Oehrlich, Principal Analyst at Forrester Research, will discuss how a process-based approach to IT Service Management can help IT organizations transform themselves into true service providers. Ms. Oehrlich will also discuss the benefits of a unified service request center in bridging the gap between IT operations and application development.
• November 17, 2011: Glenn O’Donnell, Senior Analyst at Forrester Research, will cover why App Dev and IT Operations integration is necessary for internal IT survival and how to make Dev-Ops work. Mr. O’Donnell will discuss the 6 steps to improving Dev-Ops collaboration.

Register at:
http://info.serena.com/ITSM_WebcastJointLaunchRLM_ITSM_Oct42011_LP.html?src=kf