SAP Picks Black Duck

July 29, 2010

We received an email with information about SAP’s open source activities. The good news is that Black Duck Software, a provider of products and services for accelerating software development through the managed use of open source software, issued this statement:

SAP has selected to implement the Black Duck™ Suite. The comprehensive suite provides a platform for managing the use of open source software in a multi-source development process. It will help development teams at SAP improve productivity by further automating the company’s open source approval processes. SAP is the world’s leading provider of business software(*). SAP, which previously used complex, time-consuming and partly manual processes for handling open source approvals and the legal compliance aspects of open source use, sought a scalable, enterprise-strength platform to further automate the management, compliance, and integration of open source software into its development life cycle. After researching available tools and platforms, SAP chose the Black Duck Suite to support SAP developers worldwide with the suite’s automated, developer-oriented, multi-function platform, which supports scanning, early detection and management of open source used in software development. “When we established the open source approval process at SAP in 2001, we assumed we’d receive only a few open source requests per month,” said Francis Ip, head of SAP Global Technology Legal Compliance. “However, with the continuously increasing importance of open source globally and SAP’s recent strategic change towards systematically utilizing benefits that come with open source, it was necessary for us to scale our open source process through further automation. We conducted an exhaustive search of applications on the market, and the Black Duck Suite was the best solution we tested. The Black Duck Suite will help us further automate and scale our open source process in order to support our open source strategy.” “Using the Black Duck Suite will help SAP developers reduce the amount of code that needs to be developed while increasing the velocity of development,” said Peter Vescuso, executive vice president, Black Duck Software. “Automating the use and management of open source software also will yield the benefits of compliance with software license obligations, reducing risk and improving developer efficiency.”

Based on information in this announcement, SAP is making a move into open source. Details are not yet available. The announcement is a vote of confidence for Black Duck, a company giving one of the presentations at the Lucene Revolution Conference in October in Boston, Mass. For more information on the Black Duck Suite visit www.blackducksoftware.com.

Stephen E Arnold, July 29, 2010

Written by Stephen E. Arnold · Filed Under Enterprise, News, Open source, Search, Technology

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Stephen E. Arnold monitors search, content processing, text mining and related topics from his high-tech nerve center in rural Kentucky. He tries to winnow the goose feathers from the giblets. He works with colleagues worldwide to make this Web log useful to those who want to go "beyond search". Contact him at sa [at] arnoldit.com. His Web site with additional information about search is arnoldit.com.