New Serena Mariner Enhances Project, Portfolio Mgmt

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 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.

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.

“We are looking for better ways to deliver software to our customers and Saas is one of them. We also look to our customers for ways to make our software better,” said René Bonvanie, senior vice-president of worldwide marketing, partners and 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.”

Enhancements to the Mariner 2008 R2 include an interface that is Web 2.0-like to make it easier for users to read and quickly discover important information, Widget Space that extends the project workspace by adding reports, data, and other content from outside of Mariner, the Mariner Xcelerator that allows users to import resource and project data directly from Excel, an updated Microsoft Project Connector and custom reporting that allows users to download report templates, customise them and upload new or customised report templates into Mariner.