Open Source Cloud Computing Service 10gen Gets $1.5 Million
According to reports online today, and a release, Union Square Ventures, the venture firm that funded such names as Del.icio.us, FeedBurner, Etsy and Twitter, is investing $1.5 million in open source cloud computing service 10gen. 10gen's software stack is roughly comparable to Google App Engine "in that it provides a new stack of tools (database, grid management, application server) that are purpose-built to run in a cloud environment," according to the company. An alpha version of the company's platform SDK is available now as a free download.
10gen was founded by Kevin Ryan, previously the CEO of DoubleClick, and others from DoubleClick. DoubleClick has a massive part of the display advertising market online (and Google is trying to purchase it). Presumably, Ryan knows a thing or two about commercial efforts online. Despite the fact that 10gen's software stack is free and open source, hosting and customer service are fee-based.
I suspect that several of the open source applications and services focused on cloud computing will follow this model, where they offer tools for free and services for fees. 10gen looks to be offering flexible application development options. Its application server supports JavaScript, with Ruby support in early testing and other languages on the product roadmap.
What's really interesting here is that open source is obviously playing a much bigger part in cloud computing. That seems like a very good trend as expensive-to-maintain, scalable cloud applications arrive. I enjoyed Matt Asay's quip on this topic, in response to one of our recent posts on U.C. Santa Barbara's open source cloud computing initiative Eucalyptus: "I'm a little lacking in funds to be able to build out my own "cloud." Heh. Exactly.
In addition to our recent post on Eucalyptus, we've recently covered several other notable open source applications for cloud computing. These include Enomalism, Puppet, and more. It sounds like 10gen will be a player to contend with here.