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Black Duck Crisps Up Visibility

Black Duck has enhanced its open source software (OSS) management and governance platform to bring the product to its 6.1 release. Black Duck Suite is engineered to speed open source code discovery and code visibility to improve developers’ compliance and collaboration issues.

This product works to identify OSS and other recurring code in software libraries, binaries, and source code. The company points to research* showing that best practices companies use 60-80 percent of open source software in their development process, but that reaching that level requires overcoming some key challenges. Often the first step is a rapid code scan to get a snapshot of the code base and establish the insight needed to implement an effective OSS strategy. *Source: 2012 Future of Open Source Survey.

“Increased adoption of open source by IT organizations is driving the need for new types of governance and management solutions that automate assessment and tracking of components, enable greater collaboration, and provide actionable information throughout the software development lifecycle,” said Mark Driver, research vice president, Gartner.

Black Duck Suite 6.1 enhancements include Express Scan, which allows developers to get a high-level snapshot of a code base. There is also now the ability to populate a centralized software catalog for developer access, plus the enablement of standardization and reuse of approved code.

A set of scanning capabilities covering software libraries, binaries, and source code help complete insight into code makeup, licensing, and security vulnerabilities. Plus, an enhanced ALM tool integration framework that is “repository-neutral” is now included and aims to ease integration with issue tracking systems including Jira, ClearCase, and Remedy.

The new Express Scan feature leverages file-level matching for development managers who need to identify code provenance to improve management and control and, ultimately, software quality and supportability. Express Scan findings are displayed in an executive dashboard, which provides summary component information and includes a drill-down capability for further analysis.

These enhancements to the Black Duck Suite will put enterprise-class code scanning capability within reach of all software development organizations, and do so quickly, efficiently, and effectively,” said Tim Yeaton, President and CEO, Black Duck Software. “Faster scans let development managers analyze and understand more of the code under their purview, improve management, and ensure compliance. With improved visibility, control, and collaboration, Suite 6.1 enables faster, higher quality software development.”