RSSSerena’s Vail
I had an opportunity to take a look at Vail, Serena Software's new enterprise-grade mashup platform, on Friday, and indeed it does work.
I happened to come across their page on the site for the product while doing some other research that afternoon, which resulted in the screenshot above; apparently they're getting ready for the formal unveiling of the software today at their xChange 2007 conference.
Vail, if you hadn't heard about it (this PC World article has some of the early information), is a combination of a data-driven, web-based application and a client-side development toolset. The web-app isn't anything that will be surprising to anyone who has used any AJAX based, Web 2.0 flavored application. The development tool, and the implications that go with it, are what set Vail apart.
The server component is data-driven and flexible, running atop Oracle, MS SQL Server, and other databases. More importantly, perhaps, it is proven technology, the core of it coming from a Serena product which has been used in corporate applications at major companies for years. This may simply seem like good leverage, but it's important in that while Serena is executing a new concept, they're doing so without going out on a limb with new technology as well. That's less to break, and that's good.
While the server software will be available for purchase and you can run it on-site and manage it yourself, Serena is simultaneously launching a hosted, SaaS version managed by a newly created department, itself managed by former Salesforce.com AppExchange General Manager Rene Bonvanie. This aspect of the software will be particularly important because, regardless of whether you host it or Serena hosts it, the linchpin of its functionality will be in the APIs which it can hook in to. Going with the AppExchange model relieves both Serena and major enterprise vendors from having to produce these APIs individually, instead allowing corporations with a need for them to develop in-house and then recoup the costs reselling the work to others.
But as I said, the server side of the software is the less interesting part-the flexibility is nice, but the real advantage is the design interface.
Intended to allow non-technical users to build their own mashup software out of other corporate and third-party data structures, it resembles nothing so much as Visio, or Yahoo Pipes-a straightforward, visual, drag and drop workflow designer. You can drill down, however, into the interstitial steps of the workflow and create automation or logic objects. The designer looks pretty straightforward and it's certainly less complex than traditional development tools. I've written more about the pros and cons of that particular approach on my blog Status, but whether or not you like the idea of users developing applications on its own merits, I think there is a substantial advantage in having such an intuitive development environment available. Even if end-users can't manage it, it could increase the productivity of IT staff working toward the same ends.
Partly I was impressed because it seemed very clear to me, regardless of the success or failure of their particular effort in this realm, that Serena really gets one of the core difficulties in managing today's IT organization-the expectations and personal experience of the average end-user has far and long since outstripped the ability of the IT department to deliver magic in a box. The workforce today wanders home from their clunky, menu-driven legacy application desktop, their segmented, non-integrated line of business databases and contact management tools, their radically varied proprietary interfaces, and they sit down in front of the Internet: the shining, golden palace of Google, where all their data is available in a user-configurable dashboard, where there is a widget for every wish, where amazing, integrated gobbets of information in easy, intuitive interfaces are available at every searchable corner.
Of course much of that is porn, and not every user is so sophisticated-but their numbers are growing, and the archaic nature of their business systems is producing tension in the workforce. One need look no further than Chris Anderson's recent "Who needs a CIO?" post or even Friday's Slashdot article "Barrier to Web 2.0-IT Departments" and the conversations that ensue to see this, and it's increasingly obvious to both business owners and CIOs alike that this tension is driving end-runs around the established IT department jurisdiction like never before. If you are in the Chris Anderson camp, you hail this movement; if you are the man responsible for maintaining the systems it is moving around, you probably have your head in your hands.
Serena's answer to this, and I think the ultimate answer to it, is to push tools out to those frustrated users to allow them the power and flexibility they are looking for, but to make those tools subject to the realm of the IT department. I think they still have some room to improve in that direction-my query about discrete permissions on database design functions was met with silence and then a "We don't have that currently"-but they're clearly making the effort. And the Long Tail of application development is real; Nathan Rawlins at Serena estimates that 75% of current IT budgets go directly toward maintenance, leaving little money for development… yet everywhere I turn, users and managers have ideas for workflow automation that would make their lives easier, their jobs more efficient. Vail can meet this need, with a little luck and some API support.
It will be unveiled today and it's worth taking a look at.
