The platform merges the former Merant Dimensions product and Serena's ChangeMan DS tool for distributed software change management and adds in the additional ALM capabilities, as well as an executive dashboard. Serena acquired Merant in 2004 and anticipates that ChangeMan DS customers will migrate to Dimensions 10, DiMaria said.

Serena previously offered its standalone RTM (Requirements Traceability Management) tool for requirements management; it is being incorporated into Dimensions 10 but still will be available separately.

Before Dimensions 10, users could import and export data between RTM and Dimensions 9; now, that exchange will be seamless and automatic.

With Dimensions 10, Serena seeks to provide a soup-to-nuts platform for ALM rather than having users piece together various products. "What's happened over the last few years is companies have invested in a bunch of point tools that are extremely expensive to maintain," DiMaria said, adding that tools were not designed to work together. "What Dimensions 10 represents is one solution to that problem."

One user of Serena's Dimensions 9 platform said he was pleased with Dimensions 10 but is still investigating whether it makes sense to replace some current tools with the entire Dimensions 10 platform.