Serena StarTool FDM became Generally Available on April 30, 2013, just in time to announce at the recent Mainframe Virtual User Group (VUG).  Mark Henderson from the StarTool Development Team presented the StarTool products roadmap and the roster of feature updates in StarTool FDM 7.7.2.

Improved DASD support:

• Volume map (VMAP) command shows all areas of EAV
• Dataset statistics (USAGE) command shows EAV-specific DSCBs
• Allocate large PDSEs

In our recent Mainframe Virtual User Group (VUG) meeting, we highlighted the latest features in the ChangeMan ZMF Client Pack. John Skelton, Principal Developer from the ChangeMan ZMF Development team and frequent presenter at VUGs and the annual Serena Software xChange User Conference, stepped the attendees through an overview and an awesome demo of the latest and greatest ZMF Client

My recent post at WIRED Insights on the Evolution of RevApps is generating plenty of positive feedback.  People are commenting that the focus on Revenue Applications brings fresh insight to a variety of related topics, most especially DevOps.  Or as the posting says, enterprises must properly organize themselves, adopt the necessary tooling and set the right goals to succeed in this brave new world.

What brave new world is that?  The one that has crept up on us, where industry after industry now markets themselves to consumers via the wonders of their RevApps. File an insurance claim? Check in for a flight? Deposit a

While the Agile revolution isn’t done yet, the methodology is rather widely adopted now in development organizations.  This is especially true when what are being developed are Revenue Applications, apps that are directly used by customers in the course of business.

The game changer for winning the RevApp race has thus moved downstream to Change & Release Management.  Efficiently capturing Change Requests, triaging those CRs, routing and fulfilling them are part of the solution.  So is automating  deployments of both application and operational changes.  Fail at this and

There is a term that has been floating around the internet in the past year or so which illustrates a profound change in how we need to think about applications and how they are released.

That word is “Appification”.

Think about how you use apps on your smartphone.  App updates don’t come on regular release schedules; they come when they are needed. The driver could be a fix for something that is broken or it could be in response to having fewer downloads of an app and

Serena looks forward to hosting a vibrant, interesting and breakout-session-rich Federal User Group at the Newseum in Washington, D.C. on April 3^rd, 2013. This year’s agenda is directly driven by the feedback from Federal agencies, customers and partners.  So please mark your diaries and sign up

We premiered our latest video in front of 1,500 people this week at the Pink13 conference.  You never know how these things will be received until they air, especially when they’re supposed to be funny.  I like to think I know funny, but I’m darn sure I know laughter, and I’m pleased to report that the Change & Release Dino video triggered uproarious

Serena had a great turnout for the Mainframe xChange12 breakout sessions and the “xChange Again” webcast on October 4.  At xChange, our customers had many questions about the future of the mainframe.  In many respects, we are at the greatest crossroads in the history of the mainframe.  Three points were loud and clear from our customers.

1. Our customers are doing more with less.

With downsizing, mergers and acquisitions, and corporate restructuring, we have customers who now have only 2 or 3 ChangeMan ZMF administrators versus the 8

It was with great pleasure I attended a vibrant Federal User Group last week. With so many advances and improvements in the past 12 months, Federal agencies and system integrators showed enthusiastic interest in the evolution of our Orchestrated ALM solutions – Requirements Manager, Development Manager and Release Manager. Within the Federal government, as in many enterprise IT organizations, there is a continued need to drive efficiency and transparency across both Application

It’s been one month since Serena launched Dimensions CM 12.2, and for IT organizations struggling to balance faster delivery with greater control, CM 12.2 has been an early holiday gift! As I’ve been meeting with customers these last few weeks, I’ve been hearing some very positive feedback from those trying out the latest release. 

• “The combination of better traceability reports offered by Dimensions CM and new reversible headers features will make the adoption of the CM platform from PVCS much easier.”
• “The performance numbers from Dimensions CM 12.2 look very promising.  Anything that is done to reduce the amount of time required to deliver changes