451 Research has today published a report looking at the funding being invested in Apache Hadoop- and NoSQL database-related vendors. The full report is available to clients, but non-clients can find a snapshot of the report, along with a graphic representation of the recent up-tick in funding, over at our Too Much Information blog.

InternetNews.com yesterday published an article based on an interview with Red Hat CEO Jim Whitehurst asking the question “Is Red Hat Interested in the Database Market?” In truth there was no real need to ask the question, as Whitehurst’s comments made it pretty clear that Red Hat is interested in the database market, and specifically [...]

See our Too Much Information blog for our immediate reaction to the merger of open source database vendors CouchOne and Membase, as well as some interesting news related to Riak developer Basho Technologies.

The 451 Group has recently published a Spotlight report focused on Novell’s strategy as it relates to open source software. The report is particularly relevant given speculation that private equity firms might be about to acquire the company and break it up, and takes a look at the importance of open source to Novell beyond [...]

On Thursday, June 3 at 12pm ET we will be holding a webinar to share some of the findings from our recent report ‘Open to Investment, 2010.’ The report is available here, while a summary of the statistics is here. The webinar will contain analysis of venture funding in open-source-related vendors in 2009 based on [...]

The latest report from the 451 Group’s CAOS (commercial adoption of open source) practice is now available, presenting an analysis of venture capital funding for open source software-related vendors in 2009. Some of the key statistics are as follows: As you can see, VC funding for OSS-related vendors was down considerably in 2009, as predicted. [...]

There was some incredulity expressed yesterday when I suggested that SAP is a great case study on the way in which proprietary companies have engaged with open source. To be clear, I was not suggesting that SAP is, or should be considered, an open source company, but based on our understanding of SAP’s changing strategy [...]

Regular visitors to the 451 CAOS Theory blog will be well aware of The 451 Group’s CAOS (Commercial Adoption of Open Source) research service and our CAOS long-form reports.

They are probably less aware of the open source coverage that The 451 Group provides on a day-to-day and week-to-week basis, however, and I thought it would be worthwhile to provide some examples of The 451 Group’s ongoing open source coverage by highlighting a few recent reports.

A couple of posts have been published recently worrying about the impact of more open source specialist vendors being acquired by proprietary vendors. This is an issue that crops up occasionally. Usually when a major acquisition has been announced, and the current questioning seems to be driven by the ongoing saga of Oracle-Sun-MySQL, as well [...]

Since the European Commission announced it was opening an in-depth investigation into the proposed takeover of Sun Microsystems by Oracle with a focus on MySQL there has been no shortage of opinion written about Oracle’s impending ownership of MySQL and its impact on MySQL users and commercial partners, as well as MySQL’s business model, dual [...]

Oracle’s proposed acquisition of Sun Microsystems looks set for approval by the European Commission after the competition commission welcomed commitments from Oracle related to the future development and licensing of the open source MySQL database. The EC has until January 27, 2010, to reach a final decision however it appears that significant progress has been [...]

Matt Asay is right, in my opinion, to point out the inherent bias in the case Monty Widenius et al have made against Oracle’s potential ownership of MySQL. I would go further, however, in stating that the case being made against Oracle is flawed by the fact that it is so self-serving. For instance: I [...]

Everyone seems to have an opinion about whether Oracle should be allowed to acquire the MySQL database along with Sun Microsystems including former MySQL/Sun executives, developers, rivals, partners, analysts, journalists, the Department of Justice and even US Senators. What do open source software users think? We asked the members of the “CAOS user community”* to [...]

I’ve been trying to dig a bit deeper into the European Commission’s investigation of Oracle’s proposed acquisition of Sun Microsystems, to look beyond the received wisdom about the EC’s concerns about the deal. We know they revolve around the open source MySQL database, the European Commission has said that much. But the Statement of Objections [...]

Since the European Commission announced it was opening an in-depth investigation into the proposed takeover of Sun Microsystems by Oracle with a focus on MySQL there has been no shortage of opinion written about Oracle’s impending ownership of MySQL and its impact on MySQL users and commercial partners, as well as MySQL’s business model, dual [...]

Below is a rough draft of the cornerstone slide for a new presentation deck I am putting together to explain the various business strategies for monetizing open source software. The aim is to explain every single existing strategy using the elements on this one slide (although I am yet to test it out). In our [...]

Since the European Commission announced it was opening an in-depth investigation into the proposed takeover of Sun Microsystems by Oracle with a focus on MySQL there has been no shortage of opinion written about Oracle’s impending ownership of MySQL and its impact on MySQL users and commercial partners, as well as MySQL’s business model, dual [...]

A controversial issue in the UK this week is the BBC’s decision to invite the British National Party – the far-right, whites-only political party – to appear on Question Time, the BBC’s flagship political debate programme. Critics fear that the move will legitimise the BNP’s far-right views, while the BBC has defended the invitation on [...]

Before I even start this post I am going to repeat our view that Oracle is well aware that it has little to gain from killing off MySQL and that we expect MySQL to become the scale-out database for non-transactional web applications and to compete with SQL Server in departmental deployments. That said there has [...]

Matt Asay has written an interesting post speculating that Oracle might use the delay caused by the European Commission investigation into its acquisition of Sun to drive the price down. Sounds reasonable enough to me. In it, Matt makes a couple of statements, one I agree with: “Oracle… likely will prove to be a better [...]