Black Duck goes into workflow management

CEO Doug Levin told ZDNet last week his new Black Duck Code Center "leverages the same knowledge base that protects licenses in our base business" like ProtexIP, but also does much more.

He called it  "an enterprise class management system for the earliest part of the application life cycle, when companies are searching for, selecting and integrating components into their development."

An overview, datasheet, and use case on the new product are already on the Black Duck web site.

Too many companies use spreadsheets and e-mail to manage the front end of their development process, Levin told me.  

"That is inefficient and presents a challenge for companies adopting open source and third party components. Our collaboration platform also supports workflow, so component requests can be tailored to company policy and approvals tracked, with email notifications and alerts sent out."

Best of all, Levin said, the Black Duck Code Center is compatible with other workflow solutions, and moves the company toward the area of business process management.

"This is not redundant. It's a unique capability which is being introduced for specific purposes. We also integrate with various infrastructure, like source code management systems."