Source: Clement Communications

DRUD Tech Announces Open Source Veteran Steven Grandchamp As CEO

Grandchamp Joins Drupal Veterans Kevin Bridges and Rick Manelius on DRUD Tech Leadership Team

DENVER, CO--(Marketwired - Sep 26, 2017) - DRUD Tech, provider of open source development tools that automate and simplify workflows and web application development starting with CMSes like Drupal and WordPress, announced today that it has hired experienced open source software executive Steven Grandchamp as CEO. Grandchamp joins established longtime web developers and Drupal contributors Kevin Bridges, Chief Technology Officer and Rick Manelius, Chief Product Officer at DRUD Tech.

"DRUD Tech is expanding our development capabilities, growing our leadership team, and further developing our technical talent," said Grandchamp, CEO, DRUD Tech. "I'm incredibly excited to join DRUD Tech. With solutions designed to abstract away real challenges and complexity involved in building, deploying, and hosting web applications, DRUD Tech offers unmatched opportunity for developers and designers to realize nearly instant benefits with respect to development time and cost."

DRUD Tech, which first raised $1 million in seed investment in 2014 from private Denver-area investors and subsequently raised an additional $5.5 million, provides an open source, platform-independent development toolset for WordPress and Drupal application developers. DRUD Tech's DDEV Community (https://github.com/drud) project, the first in a suite of tools and services geared toward the end-to-end development and deployment lifecycle, automates local development processes and reduces cost and labor overruns traditionally associated with website development.

A serial entrepreneur, Grandchamp was also the CEO of Denver-based software company OpenLogic, where he led the company on its mission to help enterprises successfully build and deploy applications built using open source software. Under Grandchamp's leadership, OpenLogic was acquired by Rogue Wave Software in 2013. Prior to OpenLogic Grandchamp served as CEO of IMR, where he led the company's move into Document Management, culminating in a successful exit to Captaris, Inc. Grandchamp has also served as CTO for American Fundware and Formation Technologies, VP of both North American Sales and Customer Success at open source database company MariaDB, and has held various senior management positions at Microsoft.

Grandchamp joins Kevin Bridges, DRUD Tech CTO and co-founder. Bridges is a longtime internet veteran who has been actively involved with internet systems development since 1992. He previously served as CTO of newmedia.com, one of Denver's largest digital agencies. Bridges has been an integral component helping to deliver some of the largest and most complex Drupal sites in existence. Bridges also served as the DevOps North American Global Track Chair for the Drupal Association and has worked with outstanding organizations ranging from the Bonnier Corporation, to examiner.com, to Acquia. He has been involved in Drupal as a contributor since 2004 and helped establish Colorado as a Drupal hub.

Grandchamp also joins Rick Manelius, DRUD Tech Chief Product Officer and co-founder. Manelius is a software architect, digital media strategist, and program manager who oversaw, managed, and led operations as COO at Denver digital agency newmedia.com. Manelius graduated from MIT with a BS and PhD in Materials Science and Engineering. 

About DRUD Tech
Named as a wordplay on the developers' acronym CRUD, DRUD Tech creates the industry's only comprehensive, enterprise-grade, open source suite of infrastructure and development tools. DRUD Tech enables test-driven solutions spanning the entire web development life cycle - starting with local development and continuously deploying, staging, and testing changes on the way to production. DRUD Tech has raised $6.5 million from private investors and is based in Denver.