SpikeSource CEO Kim Polese was hinting at a new direction for the former open source stack and services provider at OSBC, and the latest announcement indicates that it involves more of a focus on proprietary and “hybrid software solutions”. The new Solutions Factory offering is targeted at ISVs and is said to provide them with [...]

The figures originally reported here were preliminary and have been revised for a formal CAOS report to be published in the first half of 2009. In the interests of accuracy this data has now been removed. For a full assessment of VC funding in 2008 see this post.

IBM has got back to me with a terse response to some questions I posed following its investment in EnterpriseDB earlier this week (sample Q&A: Q. Is the investment a response to Sun’s acquisition of MySQL? A. No). What IBM does not say is in fact as revealing as what it does say, however. Here’s [...]

While this year’s OSBC event has actually started yet, the big news on day one looks set to be EnterpriseDB’s announcement that IBM has joined existing investors in a $10m Series C funding round (EnterpriseDB also announced its new Postgres Plus strategy and the open sourcing of GridSQL). IBM’s investment in EnterpriseDB is particularly fascinating [...]

SCO Group has announced that it has arranged $100m financing from Stephen Norris Capital Partners to exit bankruptcy, go private, and continue its litigation against IBM, Novell and AutoZone. “SNCP has developed a business plan for SCO that includes unveiling new product lines aimed at global customers. This reorganization plan will also enable the company [...]

What links JBoss, XenSource, Zimbra and MySQL (aside from the fact that they were all acquired for large amounts of money)? Peter Fenton and/or Benchmark Capital. UPDATE This post corrects a couple of mistakes in the original version. UPDATE Fenton made his investments in JBoss, Zimbra and XenSource while at Accel. Benchmark also invested in [...]

Earlier this month I took a look at Fortune’s tips for initial public offerings in 2008 and passed comment on the open source-related contenders. Given the events of the past ten days or so it is worth taking another look at the open source vendors that might make IPO candidates between now and the turn [...]

“2008 is starting with a bang for open source,” wrote Mark Radcliffe last week, and he’s not wrong. Not only did we see Sun’s $1bn acquisition of MySQL, but we’ve also seen an extraordinary amount of venture capital funding. Today saw no fewer than three investments announced, with Greenplum landing $27m Series C, Zenoss closing [...]

Since Sun announced its acquisition of MySQL for $1bn, there have been some suggestions that perhaps Sun paying too much for the open source database vendor. Calculating the multiple for MySQL has proved difficult because there are no official figures to go on, and also because many of the unofficial figures that are floating around [...]

Fortune magazine has published a list of its hot IPO tips for 2008. Three out of the five – MySQL, Ingres and SugarCRM – are open source companies, while another – Parallels – is an open source project sponsor (for the record, the other Fortune tip is ExactTarget). Here’s a look at Fortune’s assessment of [...]

NB The figures originally reported here were preliminary and have been revised for a formal CAOS report to be published in the first half of 2009. The figures for Q4 have been removed or updated, while those for the full year have been updated: “I believe last year was actually the peak year of open [...]

2008 could be a very good year for the likes of Compiere and Openbravo if 451 CAOS Theory’s blog stats for this year are anything to go by. I’ve just been taking a look at the most read stories of the year, and following the usual suspects (Oracle Unbreakable Linux, the Linux desktop, the EC’s [...]

This is old news for those in the Drupal and content management communities, but for some reason has not got a lot of attention from the wider open source industry: a few days ago Dries Buytaert announced that he is forming his own Drupal start-up, called Acquia. Buytaert has teamed up with Jay Batson, who [...]

I mentioned yesterday that the big money for established open source vendors went on M&A activity rather than venture funding in the third quarter.This is an indication of the maturity of the open source software market as open source vendors are beginning to reach a level where they either appear to be attractive acquisition targets [...]

The figures originally reported here were preliminary and have been revised for a formal CAOS report to be published in the first half of 2009. In the interests of accuracy this data has now been removed. For a full assessment of VC funding in 2007 see this post.

Talend, an open source data integration company, announced yesterday that it had secured $3.5m in its Series B funding round (press release). This round included participation by investors AGF Private Equity and Galileo Partners. This brings the total amount of funding raised to at least $7m (approximately $3.8m (3.1m Euros) in Series A – 2.1m [...]

Centric CRM: June 13th funding announcement (press release) of an undisclosed amount (per the deal terms) by Intel Capital. This is the first time the company has taken an institutional investment, with prior investments having come from the company founders, executives, and three angel investors, totaling a few million. Centric CRM indicated that the amount [...]

Hyperic, an open source systems management company, announced last week that it had secured $6.1m in its Series B funding round (press release). This round was led by Benchmark Capital with participation from Accel Partners. This brings the total amount of funding raised to at least $9.9m ($3.8m in Series A, from the same investors, [...]

OSBC last week provided an opportunity for three open source funding announcements (MuleSource, Zmanda, and SnapLogic), and real-time Linux vendor Concurrent announced a sale of common stock the week before. Here are the details… MuleSource: May 22nd funding announcement (press release) of $12.5m in Series B led by Lightspeed Venture Partners. The company raised its [...]

It’s time for me to get caught up on recent open source funding announcements. I have been a bit behind due to a number of conference trips and other deliverables. Let’s take a look at Interface21, DevZuz, and eZ Systems… Interface21: May 10th funding announcement (press release) of $10m in Series A by Benchmark Capital. [...]