Enterprises across all industries are increasingly using open source software to reduce development costs and accelerate time to market. However, most companies lack the necessary visibility into, and control of, their open source usage and associated security vulnerabilities, increasing security risks. With more than 4000+ open source vulnerabilities reported each year, visibility and control are priority matters. 98% of companies are unaware of the open source code they are using and 67% of companies don't monitor their open source code for security vulnerabilities.
Ian Kilpatrick (pictured), chairman Wick Hill Group, commented: “Companies today are often unaware of whether they’re using open source code or the extent to which they are using it. That leaves them open to security attacks, compliance issues, and legal action, from not acknowledging the use of someone else’s code. Heartbleed, ShellShock and other major security bugs attacked through open source vulnerabilities, so it’s a crucial issue.
“Managing and protecting open source is a growing market with significant service and consultancy opportunities for the channel, who will be able to provide improved security for their customers with Black Duck solutions.”
Kevin Bland, director of channels and alliances at Black Duck, added “Partnering with Wick Hill further highlights the increasing importance of our open source security and management solutions to managed service providers and resellers across the EMEA region who are looking to new technologies that address the challenges their customers are facing.
“The Black Duck-Wick Hill partnership, and the additional partnerships our alliance will foster, add significant momentum to our mission of enabling all businesses to secure and manage their open source deployments at every step of the software and application development processes.”
Wick Hill has also announced that they have created a new division within Wick Hill Group, called Wick Hill Select, which will provide market entry and growth support for vendors who are looking to establish a presence in, or rapidly expand across EMEA.
Ian Kilpatrick, chairman Wick Hill Group, commented: “We’ve established Wick Hill Select to work with vendors who want to grow rapidly in EMEA and who are looking for a distributor who can offer market support and high value-added services across the EMEA region. The challenge that many such vendors face is inconsistent delivery from distributors across different territories. We aim to provide a common proposition and consistent delivery across a pan-EMEA footprint.”
Wick Hill Select will provide a bespoke range of value added services including international technical support services; marketing support; reseller identification, targeting and recruitment; pre-and post-sales engineering and consultancy support services; product sales support; market analysis, etc. The service is flexible enough to focus in on any particular help that vendors need.
Kilpatrick continued “Some vendors may be looking for full sales support, as well as marketing. Others may need our ability to provide specialist focus around a particular reseller. We aim to provide vendors with the resource set they need for the territories they are entering. For high growth vendors, in market entry mode, this will provide them with access to a one-stop shop route to market.”