Ann Arbor serial entrepreneur Dug Song, a founding member of Arbor Networks and Zattoo, plans to start his own company after a one-month tenure with a rapidly expanding IT security firm.

Song confirmed this afternoon that he is leaving the Ann Arbor operation of Barracuda Networks to start his own company. He declined to offer specifics but indicated that he had identified an opportunity with some fellow tech entrepreneurs that he couldn't pass up.

"When I joined Barracuda I had been trying to recruit those friends to join me," he said, "but those friends recruited me just as hard to join them to do a separate company."

Song told AnnArbor.com's Business Review in July that he had been considering starting a company in "cloud computing," a term that refers to the trend of companies using off-site servers to manage their technology needs.

Today he declined to discuss whether his new firm would be a cloud computing company.

“If it had not been for Barracuda, I probably would’ve done a startup in this area myself,” Song  said in July.

Barracuda about a month ago hired Song as its chief architect. The network security expert has mobilized the local tech community in recent months by forming a variety of networking groups, including A2Geeks and Ann Arbor New Tech Meetup.

Song's decision to leave marks a significant loss for Barracuda, but the company is not likely to scale back its growth in Ann Arbor. Barracuda has been hiring new employees at a pace of one to two per week, new product initiatives director Sean Heiney has said.

Heiney was not immediately available for comment this afternoon.

Barracuda, which has about 700 employees nationwide, announced in September 2008 that it would hire 185 workers over five years in an expansion at an office on Depot Street. The company already has some 70 workers.

Song, who made the announcement via Twitter this afternoon, said he regretted having to leave Barracuda so quickly.

"That's my biggest regret, that I hadn't fully investigated my options before joining the company, he said. "I'm still a big supporter of Barracuda, and I'm going to do everything I can to make them successful."

(Photo by Robert Ramey: Dug Song speaks to a crowd of tech entrepreneurs at an Ann Arbor New Tech Meetup event this summer.)

Contact AnnArbor.com's Nathan Bomey at nathanbomey@annarbor.com or (734) 623-2587 or follow him on Twitter.