--UPDATE ADDED May 28th, 2010—

From the author Ron Brister, Director of IT for Serena Software Inc.

Since this blog posted, there has been some speculation that our decision to migrate from Google Apps to Microsoft BPOS was based solely on price, and that Microsoft, to quote a favorite film, made us an offer we couldn’t refuse.  This is 100% false.  Microsoft is not giving us anything for free.  As I noted originally in this blog, we made this decision to switch from Google Apps to Microsoft BPOS based on three things:

1) enterprise class capabilities.  Microsoft applications simply work the way we need for our business. 

2) collaboration.  These applications are used by our customers and partners, and this move will make collaboration with them easier, smoother, and better.  

3) focus.  Microsoft is focused on this as a core business area.  It’s not a sideline, which means they deliver the kinds of support, security, and reliability we expect as a customer.

As an enterprise software provider ourselves, we know our customers are happy to pay for applications that do the job, and that’s  how we feel about BPOS.  I hope that sets the record straight.

Last year at about this time, Serena Software announced that they were switching from Microsoft Exchange to Google Apps. After trying that for a while, they decided to make the switch to Microsoft Online Services Business Productivity Online Suite (BPOS). In this blog post, Ron Brister shares his thoughts about why Serena Software decided to go with BPOS.

For 30 years, Serena has been solving the tough problems facing enterprise-class organizations around Application Lifecycle Management and Business Process Management.

One of Serena’s core values is a deep, organization-wide commitment to customer success.  We work closely with our 15,000 worldwide customers to deliver solutions that help them be more successful.  As a result, we rely heavily on collaboration tools for our employees to share information and work together with customers and partners. 

This is one of the chief reasons we’ve chosen to adopt Exchange Online and SharePoint Online together with Office 2010.  They deliver trustworthy, enterprise-class solutions – with the performance, security, privacy, reliability and support we require. We know that Microsoft is a leader in the providing these kinds of solutions, and in our discussions with them, it became clear that they are 100% committed to Serena’s success and delivering solutions that drive the future of collaboration.

Using Office, SharePoint and Exchange will allow us to collaborate more effectively internally and with customers and partners, many of whom use the same technologies, and we can do so without having to deal with content loss or clients being unable to open or edit a document. In particular, Exchange is unchallenged in its calendaring and contact management abilities, mission critical functions for a global company such as Serena.

There are alternatives on the market that promise lower costs, but in our experience, this is a fallacy.  When looking at alternatives, CIOs should really evaluate the total cost of ownership as well as the impact on user productivity and satisfaction, as there can be hidden costs and higher TCO.  For instance, slow performance and/or lack of enterprise-class features (e.g., with calendaring and contact management) will torpedo the value of such a backbone system, and may get the CIO fired.

We are currently upgrading to Office 2010, and look forward to taking advantage its hybrid nature– enabling us to embrace the cloud for scale and more rapid technology innovation while preserving what we like about software, including powerful capabilities and the ability to work anywhere – even offline. 

This is what we promise to our customers, and this is what we expect as a customer.  And this is what we’ve found with Exchange Online, SharePoint Online, and Office 2010.

Written by: Ron Brister, Director of IT, Serena Software

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