Serena Software has acquired Projity for OpenProj, its free, open source desktop project management software, and Project-ON-Demand, its Software as a Service (SaaS)-based project management software. With this acquisition, Serena significantly bolsters its Serena Mariner Project & Portfolio Management (PPM) offering. Serena Mariner was rated by Forrester as a leader in the The Forrester Wave™: Project Portfolio Management Tools, Q4 2007 (December 2007) with "top-of-the-line portfolio management software, robust reporting, and a unique implementation road map process."

Serena Mariner provides total visibility into project and portfolio status and metrics to ensure the right people are on the right projects at the right time, ultimately delivering more value to the business. With the addition of the Projity offerings, Serena Mariner gains both an alternative to Microsoft Project as well as high fidelity bi-directional integration.

OpenProj is an open source desktop project management application available under the Common Public Attribution License (CPAL) for individual project managers to download free of charge. OpenProj offers similar functionality as Microsoft Project -- with support for multiple platforms. The success of OpenProj, with more than 600,000 downloads in 142 countries over the last year alone, shows there is considerable market opportunity for an open source alternative to commercial desktop project management applications. OpenProj is available for Windows, Linux, Macintosh, and Unix, compatible with Microsoft Project files, available in 11 languages, and designed to work with leading open source office suites including Sun's StarOffice, IBM Symphony, and OpenOffice.org, which boasts 100 million users.

Project-ON-Demand is for small- to medium-sized organizations (SMBs) where several users collaborate on multiple group projects. Project-ON-Demand is a Software as a Service (SaaS) solution that eliminates the complexity of deploying Microsoft Project for large, geographically dispersed teams. It builds on the functionality in OpenProj by delivering additional multi-project, collaboration, reporting, and management features for a small subscription fee. Companies around the world are using Project-ON-Demand, including Corning, Sun and Wincor Nixdorf, and many others.

Ultimately, Serena will integrate Project-ON-Demand's robust project management capabilities into Serena Mariner, the company's enterprise-level PPM offering, to give customers a broad view of project and portfolio status across their department or entire organization.

"Strong project management support is a critical part of our PPM strategy," said Jeremy Burton, CEO, Serena Software. "The addition of Projity brings our customers not only a viable functional alternative to Microsoft Project, but first and foremost a much stronger PPM offering on demand."

Serena will continue to offer OpenProj through open source under the name Serena OpenProj. Project-ON-Demand is available immediately as Serena Projects On Demand and is priced starting at US$10 per user per month. Serena Mariner 2008 is available now for on premise and on demand implementations. Pricing for Mariner 2008 On Demand is as low as $18 per user per month. The integrated Serena / Projity product will be available in the first quarter of 2009.