Red Hat To Push Open Source With EnterpriseDB Deal

Red Hat revealed this week that it has invested an undisclosed amount of money in EnterpriseDB, in an effort to drive open source adoption within the enterprise.

EnterpriseDB provides a commercial database system (Postgres Plus) that is based on open source PostgreSQL. This, it claims, can help businesses realise the cost benefits of an open source database, but coupled with a full range of products and services to ensure the successful development, deployment and production use of PostgreSQL.

“EnterpriseDB has clearly established itself as a leading enterprise Postgres company, which is why Red Hat has chosen to partner with and invest in the company,” said Jim Whitehurst, CEO of Red Hat. “EnterpriseDB is also working to create customer value through a subscription support model. Clearly, this is a model we see as beneficial.”

“Red Hat pioneered the adoption of open source in the enterprise with Enterprise Linux and JBoss middleware,” said Ed Boyajian, president and CEO of EnterpriseDB. “We believe the database will be the next major area of open source adoption. “Our partnership with Red Hat will accelerate the vision we share – worldwide enterprise adoption of open source IT infrastructure as an alternative to proprietary solutions.”

This last statement could point to the unease being felt by Red Hat at the moment, as it contemplates the implications of Oracle’s potential ownership of MySQL through its pending takeover of Sun Microsystems.

There is speculation that despite Oracle’s promises, Larry Ellison’s company may abandon or weaken MySQL so as to protect their own proprietary database. Red Hat is hugely popular as a server platform, and MySQL is often run on top of Red Hat.

There has been no official confirmation of the size of the investment, but reports on Information Week and elsewhere suggest it is in the region of $19 million (£11.5 million). This is EnterpriseDB’s third round of funding, with IBM (a previous investor) and Japanese telecoms giant NTT, also investing in this round.