Serena Software launches IT service management offering

Serena takes on BMC, HP and Service-Now with ITSM system

Business process vendor Serena Software has launched its Serena Service Manager (SSM), marking its move into IT service management (ITSM).

SSM is built on the Serena Business Manager package (SBM) and will see users of that application lifecycle management (ALM) system beginning to manage their IT services using the technology.

Serena senior worldwide marketing vice president David Hurwitz said: "We're taking the same approach we took with customers' application delivery processes to cater for our customers' IT service management needs.

"We're providing a unified request centre that will help reduce helpdesk and service desk costs by reducing IT issue resolution times."

SSM is targeted at medium and large firms and can be reconfigured by non-technical end users as no coding is involved.

Hurwitz said that Serena's main competition in the ITSM market was BMC's Remedy system, and that the company also saw a lot of Service-Now customers.

In a recent report on Serena's new ITSM package, Ovum analyst Martin Gandar said: "In general this [ITSM] is a crowded market and the established players have very similar breadth of functionality. However, their approaches, degree of tailoring and integration as well as their applicability to different circumstances will vary widely.

"It’s important when assessing vendors that you look at how their solution will integrate with your current and future IT processes both in-house and externally," added Gandar.

SSM can be deployed as a cloud-based or on-premise system. Hurwitz said: "Firms could also choose a hybrid model, with some IT services being managed in the cloud while other more critical services could be managed on-premise."