Four integrated product suites aim to allow for application change and performance lifecycles Mercury Interactive on Monday is upgrading its product suites with the aim of helping CIOs run IT like a business. After pouring $500 million into acquisitions and R&D, Mercury will roll out new versions of its software testing, real-time application monitoring, and IT governance suites.Integration among the four suites, all referred to as “centers,” is intended to help IT manage application change and performance lifecycles.Among the products to be unveiled is Mercury IT Governance Center 7.0, the successor to Kintana. Built to provide visibility into IT priorities, Governance Center 7.0 includes improved portfolio management, as well as project, resource, and time management. Mercury Quality Center 8.2, which optimizes application quality, provides enhanced visibility into application readiness via a new dashboard. Business process testing is also highlighted.Mercury Performance Center 8.1, for boosting application performance, features a dashboard that reports on application deployment readiness. Mercury Business Availability Center 6.0, aimed at ensuring an application’s business value, features workflow-based service-level management.Mercury is seeking to spread beyond its longtime niche as a testing vendor and to appeal to CIOs and CFOs, said Zeus Kerravala, vice president at Yankee Group. “I think what they’re doing is good. They put a wrapper around all their products,” he said. Software Development