Serena integrates portfolio management acquisition

Serena Software on Monday announced it has integrated project and portfolio management software which it acquired from Pacific Edge last year with its existing application development products.

The software, called Mariner, is designed to let development managers and other IT executives to get more detailed information on the status of ongoing projects.

The application can gather information from Serena's other products, namely its TeamTrack defect tracking tool and Dimensions CM program for gathering application requirements.

By rolling up that data and combining it with budgeting information, Mariner creates a dashboard view of application development projects.

"CIOs haven't been able to do a decent job of saying where the money goes. Mariner gives them a vehicle to communicate with the CFO (chief financial officer) and the executive team," said Serena President and CEO Jeremy Burton, who joined the company earlier this year.

"It puts a pretty face on all the projects but, also just as important, it allows for the CIO to drill into the details," much the same way a manager can zero in on ongoing sales opportunities, he said.

Through the ALF (Application Lifecycle Framework) open-source project at Eclipse, Serena intends to build integrations with application lifecycle management products from other vendors, Burton said.