Black Duck Software Secures $12 Million in New Funding Round Led By Split Rock Partners

WALTHAM, Mass., Oct. 13, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- Black Duck Software, the leader in open source software knowledge, adoption and governance, today announced it has closed a $12M round of financing led by new investor Split Rock Partners, with participation from its existing investors as well. The company, which has been cash-flow positive since 2009, will use the funds to accelerate growth, advance key development projects, continue acquisitions and expand its global presence.

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Black Duck's current investors also include General Catalyst Partners, Volition Capital (formerly Fidelity Ventures), Flagship Ventures, Focus Ventures, Intel Capital, SAP Ventures and Red Hat.

Founded in 2002, Black Duck has nearly 1,000 customers globally.  The company's flagship product, the Black Duck® Suite™, enables the enterprise-scale use and management of open source software (OSS) in software development. Black Duck has built its leading market share position by pioneering software tools to enable companies to effectively acquire, manage and govern the use of OSS in software development, helping these companies improve development ROI, accelerate time-to-solution and concentrate more investment on creating business value in their software. Many of the largest companies in the world use Black Duck software daily to help improve the effectiveness of their software development initiatives via expanded use of OSS.

"What drew our attention to Black Duck was their dramatic growth and the successful evolution of their business from compliance and code-scanning to a provider of enterprise scale products and services that enable the broad adoption and governance of open source software," said Jim Simons, Managing Director, Split Rock Partners. "The company now leads a sector with a $1B market opportunity, and has a compelling vision enabling the world's development organizations to more effectively use open source to enhance productivity and innovation."

"We've been extremely impressed with the leadership team's ability to execute in a competitive market and uneasy economic times, and are pleased to have the opportunity to help Black Duck accelerate its growth and expand its footprint," said Leo de Luna, Black Duck Board Observer, Split Rock Partners.

The financing follows a strong year in which Black Duck posted significant growth in excess of 35% in year-over-year sales.  In the third quarter of 2011 alone, the company added 69 new customers and grew headcount to 150.

"In a volatile economy as the use of complex sourcing is expanding exponentially – including open source and use of on-shoring and off-shoring – Black Duck has extended its capabilities through evolving its own suite and through savvy, differentiating acquisitions in the open source arena," said Melinda Ballou, Program Director of the Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) service at IDC, a research advisory firm headquartered in Framingham, MA. "Business innovation and agility are enabled by software, and management and governance are key to success as software sourcing as well as deployments on diverse platforms (including mobile and the cloud) create significant challenges for companies." 

"Split Rock is an exciting addition to our strong roster of investors," said Tim Yeaton, president and CEO, Black Duck Software. "This top-off investment round, including continuing support from our existing investors, allows us to further accelerate our growth through both organic investment and expansion, as well as continued acquisitions."

For more information about Black Duck Software visit http://www.blackducksoftware.com.

About Black Duck Software

Black Duck Software is the leading provider of strategy, products and services for automating the management, governance and secure use of open source software, at enterprise scale, in a multi-source development process. Black Duck enables companies to shorten time-to-solution and reduce development costs while mitigating the management, compliance and security challenges associated with open source software. Black Duck Software powers Koders.com, the industry's leading code search engine for open source, and Ohloh.net, the largest free public directory of open source software and a vibrant web community of free and open source software developers and users. Black Duck is among the 400 largest software companies in the world, according to Softwaremag.com. For more information, visit www.blackducksoftware.com.

SOURCE Black Duck Software