MariaDB Corporation, the database company formerly known as SkySQL, has been on a roll for a while now. The company has seen some major transitions and investments lately. Just today, the company announced that it has raised another $9 million in funding and appointed a new CEO and CTO.
The company’s total investments just crossed to over $40 million following the latest round. The round, led by existing investors Intel Capital and California Technology Ventures, got the company $9 million in new capital. The funding has been said to be a round of equity financing which will support accelerating sales and advanced technology development.
The open-source relational database solutions company also replaced its CEO. Patrik Sallner, a Finn who was the CEO of MariaDB since 2012 has been now replaced by Michael Howard, a veteran executive from the enterprise world.
Michael’s proven leadership and deep operational and technology expertise will enable MariaDB to extend its position in the open source database market,
said Scott Raskin, independent director on the MariaDB Board.
With his extensive experience driving growth at both private and public companies, we believe Michael’s leadership will enable MariaDB to capitalize on the massive shifts and opportunities it is addressing in the data management space.
Howard previously acted as the CEO of C9. He transformed this company into one of the leading predictive analytics companies in the CRM space. Under his leadership, C9 acquired the sales and transit management company InsideSales. He was also in leading post at companies like Greenplum (now Pivotal), the Big Data division of EMC, Ingrian Networks and Outerbay and Oracle.
The breadth of MariaDB’s customer base and user community is strong validation that open, enterprise-grade products are the future of the database market,
said Howard.
I am excited at the opportunity to work with the MariaDB team and our partners to create database products that lead the market in innovation and value.
The company also gained a new CTO. And who better could the board score than the big daddy himself? Monty Widenius, the creator of both MySQL and MariaDB, will be joining the company as the chief technology officer.
Widenius has been one of those people in the industry who love open-sourcing and promote it wherever possible. The world renowned programmer developed MySQL, the most widely adopted open source relational database, which was acquired by Oracle as part of the Sun Microsystems purchase in 2010. He also founded the MariaDB foundation and will now remain that along with the company’s Open Source Advocate.
MariaDB’s success as an open source technology goes hand-in-hand with its growing popularity in the commercial market. As part of the MariaDB team, I will be able to create innovative data management capabilities more quickly, and ensure these are open and accessible to the global development community by continuing the close collaboration with the MariaDB Foundation,
said Monty.
As far as the future of the company is concerned, Howard told TechCrunch that they would be in the areas of database and security, temporal processing and the Internet of Things. He added that IoT is an area where the company is likely to make an acquisition.
