Release automation is a hot topic.  This is pretty exciting to witness since I have worked in the industry for a long time and crafted quite a few deployment solutions by hand.  However, there may be too much focus on release automation and not enough on release management holistically.  Pushing bits to servers with a small amount of process management around it is where most release automation tools stop.

Process management, visualization and traceability are all critical, especially as the number of releases

I am very pleased to announce that another Serena solution has been recognized by the industry. This time our Serena Release Automation solution is in the spotlight for being named a finalist in Network Products Guide’s annual Hot Products Awards for the Application Delivery category. This is the third consecutive year that a Serena solution has been part of the awards finalists’ circle.

Stay tuned,

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

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

Continuous Delivery is all the rage for dev teams and the release management / application delivery marketplace.  And rightfully so, as it is the application delivery methodology that lets App Dev deliver the code.  It saves time and money as it cuts the time for applications to be delivered into production.

A key driver for Continuous Delivery has been the adoption of Agile as a development methodology.  Most of our long-term application lifecycle management (ALM) customers have implemented at least some agile development processes,

Thank you for the feedback on this blog series that examines how Serena gains insight from our customers into where our solutions need to develop. I have tried to respond to every one of the emails but apologies if I missed one. This time I thought we’d take a little sidestep and hear from one of our partners.

MMA Technologies is based in New Jersey. The team comprises of seasoned experts in the field of Release Management with decades of experience delivering business-critical applications into production for some of the largest financial institutions in the world. Eric Kunkel

This never gets old.  Innovation and validation, that is.  Serena’s innovation in the broad realm of ITIL processes was validated almost a year ago when we won Pink Elephant’s prestigious ITIL Innovation of the Year Award.  The new news is that we’ve just been selected as a finalist for this year’s award, further validating our ongoing innovation.

Our innovation this time is to directly address and automate the challenges of

Welcome back to the blog series that examines how Serena gains insight from our customers into where our solutions need to develop.

In our second episode we hear from Matt Stratton at Apartments.com. Any online business needs to have maximum velocity in IT in order to maintain its competitive edge. To rapidly innovate and turn software versions, Apartments.com has to release software very fast, with repeatable accuracy and efficiency. The pressure was on at Apartments.com because of the development team’s move to Agile methods and the need to ensure business continuity. Two

Apartments.com is the #1 online rental search destination and the way they stay #1 is with high velocity product releases and deployments.  Matt Stratton of Apartments.com recently lit up xChange12, Serena’s global user conference, with their success story.

Apartments.com‘s technology teams were doing two-week sprints but found that releases needed to be managed better and automation was a must.  According to Matt Stratton, Director of Technology Operations at Apartments.com:

“In our business, we can’t afford to have

Day 2 at xChange12

Speeding ALM implementations, Peter Raymond from R&D described Serena’s Orchestrated ALM reference architecture. Walking through domain models, artifact relationships and process models, the reference architecture provides a blueprint to help our customers coordinate and integrate processes and tools across the Application Development and Delivery lifecycle. He then described a customer implementation that was expedited through use of the reference architecture to simply revise and adjust forms, workflows and integrations quickly and efficiently.

There was plenty of excitement when Jack Leon, also from R&D, revealed the evolution of our process-based agile