Serena Software Moves 700 Employees to – All In One Day

It’s Lights Off For Exchange at Serena

REDWOOD CITY, Calif. — March , 2009 — Serena Software’s IT manager, Ron Brister, turned off the company’s Microsoft Exchange server on Monday, March 9, finalizing the company’s move to Google Gmail as its corporate email standard. In one day, Serena successfully moved more than 700 people around the world to Gmail. They called it “G-Day.”

“It’s remarkable how quickly and easily Serena Software moved more than 700 employees to Google Apps,” said Rajen Sheth, Senior Product Manager, Google. “We were impressed with their efficient transition, and the result is reflective of the fast innovation made possible by cloud computing.”

Why Gmail Makes the Most Cents For Serena Software’s CEO, Jeremy Burton, the move to Gmail made perfect sense. He was spending a hefty amount of his IT budget on Microsoft products and the licensing fee was about to see a steep increase. About a year ago he started looking for an alternative and eventually he came to believe that moving to Google was a no-brainer.

“Any company that is not considering making the move to Gmail should seriously reconsider,” said CEO Burton. “The functionality of Gmail is good enough. And the fact that our projected savings are up to $1 million over the next three years is reason enough to make the change.”

How Serena Did It Ron Brister, Serena’s IT manager, was initially resistant to the concept of Gmail as the company’s enterprise standard, but his CEO had mandated the change. As Brister investigated Gmail further, his concerns disappeared and he effectively championed the idea around the company. Brister worked closely with his IT team to prepare a detailed four-week rollout plan leading up to “G-Day.” The task force communicated regularly with employees to prepare them for the migration. And, in keeping with the company’s spirit of innovation, they created 20 do-it- yourself (DIY) videos to help Serena employees feel empowered to make the transition themselves.

While the IT team took many steps to ensure a smooth migration, they still anticipated a barrage of support calls and trouble tickets on G-Day and at least one week after. Therefore, Brister assigned 13 IT pros to man the phones and help desk around the clock as of Monday, March 9. Surprisingly, the calls only trickled in – mainly from people who had forgotten their passwords. Brister says the hours of preparation paid off tenfold for the IT team.

“We were planning to have four IT members on call, 24 hours a day for three days,” said Brister. “We ended up needing only two IT guys for three hours – total. The transition was nearly seamless.”

Serena is pleased with the outcome and encourages other large companies to assess whether Gmail is right for them. To that end, Serena is making its rollout plan and DIY videos available for public use.

Serena Software, Inc. Serena is a privately owned company, headquartered in Redwood City, California USA, with 29 offices in 14 countries and over 800 employees. Serena provides software on premise and on demand to over 15,000 customers including 96 of the Fortune 100. Serena enables teams of programmers to become more efficient by standardizing and automating development processes across both mainframe and distributed environments. Serena makes business analysts and developers more productive in building collaborative applications through a unique lean business process management solution. Serena also enables IT executives to gain visibility into their projects, resources and costs. Serena believes that VPs of application development should have access to the same quality of information about their organization as the CFO has about Finance.

Serena is a registered trademark of Serena Software, Inc. All other product or company names may be trademarks of their respective owners, and their use is intended for identification purposes only and not in association with or as sponsorship or endorsement by such owners. Copyright © 2009 Serena Software, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

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