www.enterpriseitplanet.com/networking/news/article.php/2221151
By Pedro Hernandez June 12, 2003 The open source database movement got a shot in the arm with word that MySQL AB secured $19.5 million in financing earlier this month. MySQL AB develops and markets MySQL database server, which has been steadily garnering the attention of corporate IT departments particularly in these cost-conscious times. The round of Series B financing was provided by Menlo Park, CA's Benchmark Capital in conjunction with the venture capital firm's European fund and Switzerland's Index Ventures. Kevin Harvey, a Benchmark Capital general partner, will sit on MySQL AB's board of directors. Mr. Harvey described the factors that made MySQL attractive to the venture capital firm, "MySQL AB is a strong 'second wave' open source company with a profitable business model, a winning technology that is battle tested by a community of more than 4 million open source advocates, and an established worldwide reach." According to company, MySQL is downloaded 30,000 times a day and is currently installed on 4 million systems. Organizations using the technology include HP, Lucent, Yahoo! and NASA. MySQL is available under an open-source GNU General Public License (GPL) and a non-GPL commercial license. The funds will be used to grow the company's commercial business with the goal of helping MySQL make gains in mainstream business markets where it faces competition from IBM, Oracle and Microsoft. The news of comes after the firm and SAP entered into a cross-licensing deal last month. The partnership entails the development of enterprise-caliber database products as well as the transfer of SAP DB, SAP's open source database, to MySQL AB. Discuss this article in the Enterprise IT Planet networking forum. Join today. |
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