Ok, it might look small next to [http://www.mysql.com Sun’s recent purchase], but congratulations all the same to the folks at Greenplum for [http://www.prweb.com/releases/2008/01/prweb643591.htm securing a second round of funding]. One notable investor includes the aforementioned Sun, who are trying thier best to convince people that they want to offer suite of open source database services
“Alongside Sun’s acquisition of MySQL, our investment in Greenplum is further evidence of our commitment to the open source database community and marketplace,” said Jonathan Schwartz, CEO and president, Sun Microsystems. “Postgres has been a critical part of our support offering to customers, and Greenplum’s leverage of Postgres to disrupt the proprietary vendors with breakthrough business intelligence solutions creates opportunity for their investors, and more importantly, our mutual customers.”
I still think it’s too early to tell how it will play out, but this is a good reminder than Sun’s relationship with PostgreSQL is certainly multi-faceted.
The other interesting investor is SAP (or more precisely SAP ventures). I know I am not the only person who has been [http://pooteeweet.org/blog/959 wondering what the Sun purchase means for the MySQL / SAP relationship], though personally I had been leaning toward [http://www.enterprisedb.com EnterpriseDB] as the company they would most likely jump ship towards if they were going to do it. Consider that an SAP / EnterpriseDB alliance would
* Give SAP to a low cost alternative to Oracle that they would not have to develop, but could actually become SAP certified (afaik MySQL never made it there),
* Allow SAP to leverage open source development (Postgres) while interfacing with a closed source company (which seems to be the way they like to operate)
* Validate EnterpriseDB’s claims of Oracle compatibility
* Give EntepriseDB another path into large, enterprise businesses.
This presumes EnterpriseDB is up to snuff, but I can’t imagine it would be too far off. In any case, with Sun and SAP both investing in Greenplum, that’s probably all just random speculation, since clearly SAP and Sun have a working relationship and now have even more stakes in other open source players.