After 17 years of offering HP 3000 development utilities, Diamond Optimum Systems became part of Serena Software in June, transferring its 10-person development staff intact. Diamond’s founder, Igor Yasno, became Serena’s vice president of client server development tools as part of the transaction, while the company’s Diamond CM software became part of the Serena development tool lineup.

Serena, with a history in the IBM System 390 mainframe market and whose flagship product is Change Man, purchased Diamond Optimum after Serena issued stock this spring in an Initial Public Offering. Serena counts about 2,000 datacenters using its products. Yasno said Diamond Optimum’s active MPE customer base was about 500 sites at the time of the sale.

“Serena is very much interested in continuing its presence in the MPE world,” said Yasno, who said the new parent company has taken booth space at the HP World conference this month. Serena was a $48 million company for the year ending January 31 before going public this spring. Its first-quarter revenues were $14.2 million.

While the merger with Serena was being discussed this spring, Diamond Optimum offered its Diamond CM software, a change management tool that works across Unix, MPE and NT platforms, in a 10-user license for free to the HP 3000 market. “As much as things have changed, they also remain the same, including our commitment to the HP 3000 world,” Yasno said.

Serena hasn’t decided yet what the future will bring for the other products in the Diamond Optimum lineup: Stargate, the first graphical user interface tool for HP 3000 management; Job Control System/3000; and Version Control System/3000. Yasno said that much of the functionality of Doc/3000, the documentation tool for HP 3000 developers, has been integrated into Diamond CM. Serena has an upgrade path planned for the Doc/3000 users, he added.