New Serena Mariner Makes Project and Portfolio Management More Intuitive, Accessible, and Secure

July 31, 2008 - PRLog -- The second release of Serena Software’s on-demand Project and Portfolio Management tool is now available as Software as a Service (SaaS). Serena® Mariner® 2008 R2 gives IT and business users a way to manage their entire project portfolio quickly and easily without creating unwieldy spreadsheets in Excel. The improved interface makes common tasks more intuitive and project data more accessible and secure, helping companies (and individual departments within them) of every size – from small- and mid-size businesses to the enterprise – benefit from the SaaS advantage.

Named a Leader in Project and Portfolio Management (PPM) tools by Forrester[1], Serena Mariner provides total visibility into project status and metrics to ensure the right people are on the right projects at the right time, ultimately delivering more value to the business. Delivered as a service, Mariner further benefits companies large and small by eliminating the need to manage infrastructure or install software, while also providing faster time to value and simple subscription pricing.



“Serena’s commitment to SaaS means we are always looking for better ways to deliver software to our customers. We also look to our customers for ways to make our software better,” said René Bonvanie, senior vice-president of worldwide marketing, partners & online services. “Customers made these Mariner enhancements real, from retuning the user interface around the workflow needs of their businesses, to the specific tasks rolled up into the summary views on the datasheets.”



Like all Serena products delivered via SaaS, Mariner has published pricing and discount schedules. Mariner prices are as low as $18 per user per month, bringing the power of enterprise IT tools within reach of every business, regardless of size.



What’s New in Mariner 2008 R2



Enhancements include:



Improved user experience

·        The new Mariner interface is Web 2.0-like to make it easier for users to read and quickly discover important information.

·        Widget Space extends the project workspace by adding reports, data, and other content from outside of Mariner.

More accessible platform for all project-related data

·        Mariner XceleratorTM: To jumpstart working with Mariner, users can now import resource and project data directly from Excel – a convenient and familiar tool. Using the Xcelerator template, users can quickly and easily add resource teams, roles, rates, and individual team members.

·        Updated Microsoft Project Connector: Mariner provides native project scheduling capabilities as well as the option to integrate with Microsoft Project.

·        Custom Reporting: Now users can download out-of-the-box report templates, customize them and upload new or customized report templates into Mariner.



Mariner 2008 R2 can be freely trialed here .    



About Serena Software, Inc.
Serena is a privately owned company, headquartered in Redwood City, California, with 29 offices in 14 countries and almost 1000 employees. Serena provides software on premise and on demand to over 15,000 customers including 96 of the Fortune 100. Serena enables teams of programmers to become more efficient by standardizing and automating development processes across both mainframe and distributed environments. Serena enables IT business analysts and power users to improve productivity with a new generation of Web 2.0 tools to build Business Mashups. Business Mashups automate common everyday, processes, are visual and do not require coding. Serena also enables IT executives to gain visibility into their projects, resources and costs – CIO’s should have access to the same quality of information about IT as the CFO has about Finance. For more information on Serena, visit www.serena.com.

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