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Serena Software is shipping its business mashup solution—Serena Mashup Composer and the Mashup Server for on-premise deployment—enabling users to build and deploy simple software applications aimed at business problems.
Serena has committed to deliver its mashup solution as a SAAS (software-as-a-service) offering, but decided to release the on-premise offering Dec. 3 and will introduce the SAAS solution in the first quarter of 2008, said Rene Bonvanie, senior vice president of worldwide marketing, partner programs, and online services at Serena.
“The mashup technology is available today, but we didn’t stop at a platform and a free development tool; we’re also delivering a series of mashups and we’re building a mashup exchange,” Bonvanie said.
On Dec 18, Serena will release 13 pre-built business mashups designed to kick start any company’s mashup strategy.
For people who want to adopt existing best practices rather than start from scratch, Serena is offering 13 pre-built mashups that can be deployed to address some of the most simple yet time-consuming processes in businesses today. For example, employee requests for time off or travel approval typically require several e-mails or—even worse—walking around to managers for their signatures. This process can be automated with a mashup.
To read more about Serena’s mashup maker, click here.
Other common business and IT processes addressed by Serena’s pre-built mashups include case to issue with Salesforce.com, sales discount approval with Salesforce.com, customer de-duplication with Salesforce.com, change approval, employee time off, employee new hire onboarding, hardware and software change requests and travel approval.
“A number of these mashups are around expanding our ALM [application lifecycle management] footprint,” Bonvanie said. “We’ll continue to build out more of these mashups to build the bridge between IT and business.”
He told eWEEK that Serena has undergone a significant transformation since announcing its enterprise mashup strategy in August. “We’ve had more than 1,200 companies in over 50 countries try out the Mashup Composer,” he said.
Meanwhile, Serna also introduced Prototype Composer for prototyping mashups, and more than 2,000 people in 80 countries have evaluated it.
To create mashups using the Serena technology, mashers use Serena Mashup Composer, a point-and-click visual design tool, to connect applications and automate business processes—such as sales discount approvals—all without writing any code, the company said. Serena offers support and services to help users get their mashups to the point that they’re ready to be deployed. Then mashers click the “publish” button in Mashup Composer to send their mashups to the Mashup Server. The Mashup Server then runs the business mashups. The solution provides all the runtime services with the reliability, security, and compliance that IT requires, the company said.
Bonvanie said that departmental users will welcome the mashup technology to do what he calls “innovation without permission.” He said the IT department will remain the hub of enterprise technology innovation, but that via mashups, more people will do more things themselves to solve departmental issues.
In addition, despite advancements in the Web 2.0 arena, “people will still try to model their way out of applications or program their way out of applications,” Bonvanie said. So Serena will continue to offer its traditional ALM tools.
However, “there’ll be more focus on workflow and on a platform to build on,” he said. “Workflow in the cloud has not been done.”
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