The venture investments flowed to open source startups today, with new money arriving at Greenplum, Alfresco, and Zenoss.
The biggest chunk, US$27 million, went to Greenplum, which develops business intelligence software based on the open source Bizgres software project; the company's product is designed to help customers sift through data for useful trends. New investors Meritech Capital, Sun Microsystems, and SAP Ventures made the third-round investment, which also drew some from earlier investors.
Greenplum also said it has hired Paul Salazar as vice president of corporate marketing and Joe Otto as vice president of worldwide sales.
Bizgres runs on a single server, but Greenplum also develops a proprietary cousin called Bizgres MPP that runs on multiple machines simultaneously. Other companies involved in Bizgres development include JasperSoft, Kinetic Networks, and Loyalty Matrix.
Zenoss, which sells open source software for managing computers and networks, announced US$11 million in funding, its second round. Grotech Capital led the round, which also brought money from existing investors and several individuals: Frank Bonsal, founder of New Enterprise Associates; Andre Boisvert, chairman of Compiere and Pentaho; Mark Tolliver, chief executive of Palamida, Marty Frederickson, a former Sun Microsystems and IBM Tivoli executive, and Michele Perry, chief management officer of Sourcefire.
Alfresco, whose open source software is used to keep a handle on the large quantities of documents companies must reckon with, announced US$9 million in third-round funding. SAP led the round, and existing investors Accel Partners and Mayfield Fund joined.
Among Alfresco's customers are H&R Block, KLM, Electronic Arts, and "five of the top ten investment banks," according to the company.
That SAP is investing in both Alfresco and Greenplum is notable given that its own business software is proprietary and that SAP's executive vice president of marketing has disparaged open source software for big businesses.
This article was first published as a blog on CNET News.com.
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