Eclipse Foundation and Serena Software Announce Approval of Eclipse Application Lifecycle Framework Project; New Eclipse Project Proposed by Serena to Offer Developers an Open Platform for Application Lifecycle Management

Business Wire, July 27, 2005

OTTAWA & SAN MATEO, Calif. -- The Eclipse Foundation, an open source community committed to the implementation of a universal development platform, and Serena Software, Inc. (Nasdaq:SRNA), the world's largest company solely focused on managing change in the IT environment, today announced that the Application Lifecycle Framework (ALF) project, an Eclipse technology project and proposed by Serena on April 30 of this year, has been approved by the Eclipse Foundation. The ALF project will address the universal problem of integrating Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) technologies so that they provide full interoperability, including shared ownership of business processes and data transformation from domain to domain. Traditionally tools have integrated to the Eclipse framework as Eclipse plug-ins; this project extends the framework to become the fundamental infrastructure for tool to tool interoperability.

"The goal of Eclipse is to create a universal development platform to enable global enterprises to develop software more efficiently," said Mike Milinkovich, Executive Director of the Eclipse Foundation, Inc. "Projects such as this one enable vendors and users alike to provide the vision, innovation and resources to enhance the Eclipse platform. We are looking forward to watching this technology project develop, mature and create even more opportunities for users to further support their ALM development initiatives."

The Eclipse Platform provides a universal development platform, component model and extensibility framework for tools integration. The Eclipse Application Lifecycle Framework will extend the Eclipse platform to enable meta-data interoperability and tool choreography that span the entire application development lifecycle. The result will be an Eclipse open source framework that allows ISVs to tightly integrate entire ALM suites or individual ALM products on the widely deployed Eclipse platform, making it easier for developers to manage application changes across the lifecycle, easily and cost-effectively.

Serena is leading a growing community of technology vendors and ALM users that have collaborated on the definition, planning and implementation of this project and are now beginning its implementation. As the ALF project matures, other entities are encouraged to participate as committers, users and developers to assist in the architecture, planning, requirements and testing of ALF and further increase the value proposition of Eclipse for application developers.

"Serena is committed to creating solutions that help organizations manage IT change across the application lifecycle," said Kevin Parker, Vice President of Market Development at Serena. "By leading and driving this effort, Serena is helping to form and shape the outcome of the ALF project and thus the future of the industry, through a framework that allows vendors and customers to maximize productivity from their chosen ALM technologies. We aim to eliminate the shortcomings of point-to-point integrations and provide the interoperability needed to successfully manage customer application lifecycles."

Kevin Kernan, CEO of Secure Software, commented, "Developers have been long seeking an ALM infrastructure that can assure interoperability among the technologies used to create applications. The ALF project will enable developers to use a broader set of ALM tools that are more integrated and collaborative than ever to improve the quality of the solutions developed. Serena's leading role in the ALF project will help drive additional participation from companies with a unique value proposition to the project, to truly deliver on ALM's promise to its customers."

The ALF project is now forming Architecture, Requirements and Planning committees and is seeking vendors and customers to participate. The project timeline is being developed and the initial plan would see a prototype version of the framework being made available for testing by customers and vendors around the end of the calendar year. The first full version will be delivered in 2006 by which time a rich ecosystem of partners and vendors will have formed around the project. For more information on the Eclipse ALF project, please visit: http://www.eclipse.org/alf. Anyone who wishes to express interest in participating in the project should contact the newsgroup at news://news.eclipse.org/eclipse.technology.alf.

About the Eclipse Foundation

Eclipse is an open source community whose projects are focused on providing an extensible development platform and application frameworks for building software. Eclipse provides extensible tools and frameworks that span the software development lifecycle, including support for modeling, language development environments for Java, C/C and others, testing and performance, business intelligence, rich client applications and embedded development. A large, vibrant ecosystem of major technology vendors, innovative start-ups, universities and research institutions and individuals extend, complement and support the Eclipse Platform.