Hello again from Las Vegas! Serena Software is a sponsor of the Gartner Data Center Conference and we are showcasing our recently-announced Serena Release Manager v5. Gartner interviewed over 200 CIOs in 2012 on the topic of DevOps and found that release management was the number one issue they face.
While at the show, I had the opportunity to have lunch with Cameron Haight, Research VP at Gartner (primary focus is on DevOps). He co-authored “Use the Pace-Layered Application Strategy to Guide Your DevOps Strategy” with George Spafford, Research Director at Gartner. (This strategy is based on the book written by Stewart Brand, “How Buildings Learn: What Happens After They’re Built”.) My very brief summary of Gartner’s paper: There are different application types, with appropriately different lifecycles, and IT organizations need to have a strategy to deal with these variations. The image above (source: Gartner) shows a Pace-Layered Application Strategy.
During lunch, I shared with Cameron the idea that Serena Release Manager v5 supports the concepts of Pace-Layered Application Strategy, out-of-the-box. We allow you to identify different release train types, with different lifecycles, and applications. We easily conceive of three overlapping Release Trains that accommodate the stable, slow to change applications of type “System of Record” (which may well exist on a mainframe), the “Systems of Differentiation” application type that change more frequently, but not as much as the rapidly changing “Systems of Innovation,” where new ideas are brought to market.
Cameron encouraged us to expand this idea and show how. I agreed. Stay tuned for details about a future webcast where we demonstrate how Serena Release Manager can support Gartner’s Pace-Layered Application Strategy.
