The way software is being developed has changed over the last ten years, it has shifted from companies developing the vast majority of their own software to a software development approach that depends on open source components that are freely available. Today, the vast majority (upwards of 90%) of Java-based applications are assembled from components. Very little of these applications consist of code that companies build internally. The extent to which open source components are being used is not widely known within companies that have thousands of applications and hundreds of thousands of downloads from the Central repository.

In last week’s webinar I discussed the trends we’ve identified and the tools we’ve developed to address this challenge. Tracking down where components come from, managing your application to account for changes in components, and dealing with security and licensing issues that relate to your application’s dependencies is our focus. If you develop software using open source components, here’s a video of my webinar. If you are interested in learning more about our Insight products and starting to keep track of the components you consume, go to http://www.sonatype.com/insight.