Prepress
Serena Software Acquires Open Source Alternative to Microsoft Project
Thursday 25. September 2008 - Open Source Application Available in 11 Languages Including Chinese and Korean/On-Demand Solution Eliminates Complexity of Deploying M'soft Project
Serena Software has acquired Projity for OpenProj, its free, open source desktop project management software, and Project-ON-Demand, its Software as a Service (SaaS)-based project management software. With this acquisition, Serena significantly bolsters its Serena(R) Mariner(R) Project & Portfolio Management (PPM) offering.
Serena Mariner provides total visibility into project and portfolio status and metrics to ensure the right people are on the right projects at the right time, ultimately delivering more value to the business. With the addition of the Projity offerings, Serena Mariner gains an alternative to Microsoft Project. Serena Mariner was rated by Forrester as a leader in the The Forrester Wave(TM): Project Portfolio Management Tools, Q4 2007 (December 2007).
Open Source Project Management
OpenProj is an open source desktop project management application available under the Common Public Attribution License (CPAL) for individual project managers to download free of charge. OpenProj offers similar functionality as Microsoft Project — with support for multiple platforms. The success of OpenProj, with more than 600,000 downloads in 142 countries over the last year alone, shows there is considerable market opportunity for an open source alternative to commercial desktop project management applications.
OpenProj is available for Windows, Linux, Macintosh, and Unix, compatible with Microsoft Project files, and designed to work with leading open source office suites including Sun’s StarOffice, IBM Symphony, and OpenOffice.org, which boasts 100 million users. It is also available in 11 languages including Chinese and Korean.
On Demand Project Management
Project-ON-Demand is for small- to medium-sized organizations (SMBs) where several users collaborate on multiple group projects. Project-ON-Demand is a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) solution that eliminates the complexity of deploying Microsoft Project for large, geographically dispersed teams. It builds on the functionality in OpenProj by delivering additional multi- project, collaboration, reporting, and management features for a small subscription fee. Companies around the world are using Project-ON-Demand, including Corning, Sun and Wincor Nixdorf, and many others.
Project and Portfolio Management
Ultimately, Serena will integrate Project-ON-Demand’s robust project management capabilities into Serena Mariner, the company’s enterprise-level PPM offering, to give customers a broad view of project and portfolio status across their department or entire organization.
“Strong project management support is a critical part of our PPM strategy. Many companies today are paying $1,000 per user per year for a license to Microsoft Project. Serena believes that there should be alternatives. The addition of Serena OpenProj brings our customers a viable functional alternative to Microsoft Project. In Asia, our open source application is already localized in languages such as Chinese and Korean, with other languages pending,” said Mr. KC Yee, Vice President for Asia Pacific, Serena Software. “More importantly, in addition to giving the marketplace an alternative to commercial project management software, Serena now has an even stronger PPM offering on-demand.”
Availability
Serena will continue to offer OpenProj through open source under the name Serena OpenProj. Project-ON-Demand is available immediately as Serena Projects On Demand. Serena Mariner 2008 is available now for on premise and on demand implementations. The integrated Serena / Projity product will be available in the first quarter of 2009.