Change management software can create orderly upgrade cycles
By Staff -- Manufacturing Business Technology, 1/1/2004 12:00:00 AM
Enterprise software is seldom, if ever, static. Both packaged applications and custom systems must grow and change as business needs evolve. And in the current business climate—where companies are constantly fine-tuning their business models—managing software upgrades is becoming an important discipline.
That has created an opportunity for companies like Serena Software, which markets an application that automates the software change management process. Serena Software's ChangeMan package offers a single interface for tracking all software-related changes throughout an enterprise. Similar in design and function to a product life-cycle management application, ChangeMan controls who is working on which pieces of software, tracks what versions are installed where, keeps a history of changes, and uses workflow to ensure that proper procedures are followed through testing and release cycles.
John Keller, a Serena product manager, says heightened interest in automated software change management is "a response to the mandate for continuous process improvement that we're all facing today. We want to maximize efficiency and productivity throughout the organization. On the IT side, we want to bring projects in on time, complete them on budget, and do them right the first time. It's just too expensive to make mistakes."
When done properly, Keller says, software change management should be virtually free of system downtime, making the process "completely invisible to the user community. It's only when things go wrong that the users become aware of the change activity that's taking place all the time."
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