September 24th, 2008
Projity sells out to SERENA in SaaS push
Projity, creators of OpenProj, the open source alternative to Microsoft Project, has been acquired by SERENA Software.
Projity began rolling out a SaaS version of its software in April and at that time bragged to ZDNet it had 1 million downloads.
Serena is an old line enterprise software outfit, which began its work on mainframes. Its top corporate communications officer credited Facebook with transforming the corporate culture a year ago.
Today it is best known as an Application Lifecycle Management company, with products in use at many offices where management detests open source.
SERENA said it will integrate Projity into its Mariner Project Portfolio Management offering, which it is moving toward a SaaS model.
The move looks like a win-win for both sides, with OpenProj gaining access to capital and SERENA moving more strongly into SaaS.
The only potential criticism is that this seems like a move away from the mass market, given SERENA’s history. But perhaps SERENA is looking to change its history.
Dana Blankenhorn has been a business journalist for 30 years, a tech freelancer since 1983. You can follow Dana on Twitter. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.
Subscribe to Linux and Open Source via Email alerts or RSS.
