By integrating Mariner with Serena Dimensions and Serena TeamTrack, IT executives can make better decisions and manage their application portfolio like a business - from initial project proposal to application retirement.

"Finally, with Serena Mariner, IT executives have the tools they need to quantify and justify their application development efforts," said Jeremy Burton, Serena president and CEO. "Up to now, IT managers have been forced to make critical decisions with insufficient data. With Serena's integrated PPM/ALM solution, CIOs have the same level of visibility that line of business managers have for their operations. They can drill down on current project metrics and communicate IT's value back to the business."

Today's enterprises face competitive pressures that challenge them to deliver high-quality software that cuts costs and drives business revenue. Yet demand for new or enhanced applications far outstrips IT resources. Serena's ALM solutions now provide visibility, automation, and collaboration across the application lifecycle to reveal the true cost of maintaining existing applications and ensure that the highest value projects are properly resourced.

According to an independent report by Forrester, "ALM alone is not enough to guarantee successful software delivery. Much of ALM's value comes from its connections to the separate but related disciplines of Project Portfolio Management (PPM) and IT operations. The best PPM efforts leverage ALM data to inform executive decision-making. And hand-offs to and from IT operations fulfil, propel, and inform development activities."

"Visibility into supply, demand, execution, and performance will help IT organisations decrease costs and increase revenue, using PPM process change management and PPM process automation as a foundation," said Daniel Stang, Principal Research Analyst for Gartner, Inc. "Combining PPM and ALM support through process change and process automation is an important step toward significant, enhanced IT planning and control."

Serena Mariner Ties IT to Business Strategy Serena Mariner allows companies to manage IT as an investment portfolio by defining objectives, controlling risk, and efficiently balancing resource demands. With enterprise-wide visibility, projects are prioritised and assigned based on fit with business strategy.

By integrating PPM into a single ALM offering, Serena combines traditional PPM metrics, such as project costs and resource availability, with software development metrics, such as requirements met or defects open. This yields information that IT managers and executives can use to make better portfolio decisions and focus critical IT resources on higher-priority projects.

Serena Mariner 6.2 offers consolidated dashboard views of key project metrics via out-of-the-box integrations with both Serena TeamTrack, for real-time collaboration across the entire development ecosystem, and Serena Dimensions, which automates and manages the application development lifecycle from inception to implementation. IT decision makers and application development managers can monitor project progress without relying on manual roll-ups of project status information. As a result, IT executives can assess and manage all the elements critical to enterprise application development, including application demand, current project status, IT skills and resource availability, development costs, and fit between project progress and business requirements.

"We believe Serena has adopted the right business strategy with the integration of ALM and PPM," said Dorene Farwick and Mary Beth Peavler, Systems Managers, Western & Southern Financial Group. "With better insight into project costs, resource availability, and application development, the new solution will give IT managers and executives the ability to make smarter, more informed decisions about how to allocate resources to address the most important business priorities."

Benefits of Serena's approach include:

• Focus application development resources on high-priority projects: IT decision makers and application development managers have visibility into all application development work-making it much easier to minimise the costs of maintenance work and assign the right resources to projects that deliver the most business value.
• Deliver projects on-time, on-budget and on-value: Complete visibility into the product lifecycle ensures that IT organisations can manage projects with an eye toward costs, timelines, and business requirements. Serena's integrated PPM offering for ALM provides visibility into targeted requirements and met requirements throughout the entire project lifecycle-ensuring that IT delivers what the business needs.
• Ensure alignment between business and application development: The integration of PPM with ALM lets customers control not just the "what" and "how" but also the "why, when, and who" of IT project management. Data no longer has to be manually collected from disparate systems. Nor is it rolled up by hand and reported after the fact. Gathered from distributed sources and teams, data delivered to executives is both up-to-date and unfiltered for accurate status of projects and resources. The result is better decision-making, less rework, faster time-to-market, and final results that deliver expected project value.