Serena Software announces the latest version of its enterprise-ready solutions for software change and configuration management, Serena Dimensions CM and Express 2009 R1. This release optimizes the developer experience, adding multi-stream development and continuous integration capabilities to support Agile development and other iterative methodologies.

"This release is a significant milestone in the ALM market," said Rene Bonvanie , senior vice president of worldwide marketing, information technology and Serena On Demand at Serena Software. "Previously, enterprise development teams were forced to choose either lightweight tools that appeal to developers, or enterprise systems that provide necessary controls for meeting compliance and regulatory needs. With Dimensions 2009, teams no longer need to make that choice. In an industry first, we've made it possible to have both."

The new capabilities of Dimensions support parallel practices such as multi-stream development and atomic commit. Developers can harness the power of Dimensions without leaving Eclipse or Visual Studio .Net, making the advanced capabilities of Dimensions transparent to the developer.

These new capabilities make it possible for enterprises to support multiple development methodologies, based on the needs of individual teams and projects. Whether a team develops using traditional waterfall practices, Agile practices such as Scrum, or anything in between, teams gain the benefits of a leading change and configuration management platform. Serena Dimensions CM was recently positioned by Gartner Inc. in the Leaders quadrant in the March 2009 'Magic Quadrant for Software Change and Configuration Management for Distributed Platforms' report.

"Being the system of record, we depend on Dimensions CM for our SAS 70 compliance and ISO certification audits. With the new release providing native IDE integration and support for multi-stream development, our development teams will be more productive. Migrations from Dev to QA to Production will be more efficient, resulting in improved software quality," said Sheila Stephens , Manager of Configuration Management and Quality Assurance at ZC Sterling.

New features in Dimensions 2009 R1 include:

Developer Experience

• Stream-based development simplifies parallel development
• Automates Copy-Modify-Merge and supports atomic commit
• Streamlines developer experience within preferred client (IDE, Windows Explorer)
• New native integration for Visual Studio 2005/2008
• New intuitive developer command-line

Interoperability

• Integration with Serena Issue and Defect
• Extended availability of Web Services API & events enabling in Serena Business Mashups orchestrations
• URL Addressable Reports
• Support for Single Sign On (SSO)

Migration support

• Advanced PVCS migration options
• Added automated support for CVS and Subversion
• Documented migration tools and recommendations

Time to Value

• Improved out-of-the-box process templates
• Pre-configured and documented support for parallel development best practices