March 02, 2007
Hasso Plattner Backs Open Source Challenge To Microsoft's Sharepoint
The founding troika of Potsdam-based Mindquarry, a startup offering an Open Source alternative to Microsoft's Sharepoint Server and Lotus Connections, has taken on seed funding from Hasso Plattner Ventures and brought in Stephan Voigt who co-founded the 16 year old software company Scopeland.
CEO Voigt Posted This Pic, Taken On His Way To Work The Other Day-- As We Say Europe Has Stylish Startup Scenery
Mindquarry is a searchable Wiki application, with some nice team management and project building features. It's especially good for teams that have to share a lot of docs and files and who doesn't these days.
The software is being distributed as a free download, which makes a lot of sense to us because we think that companies may then run it on their Intranets. We learned through a recent gig that a heck of a lot of businesses and global organizations do not enable open access to the Internet for staff -- making all those newfangled web-based applications effectively off limits to the enterprise market.
The software is being released under "Mozilla Public Licence" and the founding team is hoping to attract a developer community.
Commercial customers will get a cost-saving service subscription, the "Mindquarry Enterprise Server". A further important milestone is the product as a hosted service. That allows small customers to use the Mindquarry features within a browser on their laptop, without having the need of an own server and IT-infrastructure. Users can simply access their files, knowledge and tasks from any point with Internet access.
Read - Mindquarry's CEO blog
Read - Co-founder and COO Lars Trieloff's blog
View Mindquarry
Posted at 05:26 AM | TrackBack | Permalink
November 22, 2006
Open Source In Mobile - What You Need To Know
The a:c euro didn't make it to the Informa Open Source in Mobile conference in Amsterdam in early November but Andreas Constantinou of mobile industry consulting firm Vision Mobile did, so we asked him if he heard anything that might affect a:c euro's readers.
He put together a short report in reply that highlights recent open source developments and a quick analysis. Constantinou concludes there is a huge opportunity but one that comes with double-edged risk.
Read on below the jump.
Open Source in Mobile gathered over 100 industry attendees. Presentations were given by the who's who of execs active in open source for mobile phones: Panasonic's Yukio Yagi (General Manager), Vodafone's Phil Carter (Head of Terminal Platforms), Motorola's Christy Wyatt (Head of Ecosystem Dev), A la Mobile's Pauline Alker (CEO), Trolltech's Adam Lawson (PM, Qtopia), Nokia's Ari Jaaksi (Head of Open Source Software Operations), OSDL's Bill Weinberg, ARM's Philippe Robin (PM Linux) and Black Duck's Doug Levin.
The event's mystery speaker was Sean Moss-Pulz, the visionary father of FIC's OpenMoko, who chose to break the news on the open-source platform at the event.
Open source has the potential to disrupt conventional ways of doing business in mobile, by engaging external communities to reduce total cost of platform ownership, reduce time to market, and speed up innovation in creating new mobile phones, which is why is it currently a hot space for VC activity.
However, as any open source veteran will point out, using open source
- is not free,
- does not guarantee hordes of external developers contributing code to your product
- most often needs seed funding (most successful O/S projects have commercial backers)
- requires extra care in defining the business plan, and working your way around licensing issues.
The flurry of activity in open source is evident in the many recent announcements in the area:
- Nokia's Maemo project is continuing to grow and Ari Jaaksi announced the Sardine device which would follow the 770 Internet tablet, both based on Maemo.
- In July Motorola pledged that more than half of the manufacturer's mobile phones will use Linux within 18 to 24 months. (Image above is the Motorola Linux Model e680 and here a screenshot).
- Motorola has further open sourced their implementation of MIDP3, i.e. next-gen Java for phones. At the open source conference, Christy Wyatt also said that sales of Motorola's Ming have reached 1% of total phone sales in China, an impressive feat.
- Last week Sun announced details of how it is going to open source J2ME and J2SE implementations, marking a major twist in Sun's Java saga.
- Earlier in November Adobe announced it has open sourced ActionScript 3, a core part of Flash, which is now hosted by Mozilla and will find its place into future Firefox browsers.
- Handset manufacturer FIC announced OpenMoko, the first fully open source Linux phone software platform, that competes with Purple Labs (owned by ODM Vitelcom), MontaVista's MobiLinux, WindRiver, Trolltech's Qtopia and Applix's BTO service.
- In late October Access Linux Platform announced it is open sourcing its application framework, a critical part of the phone software stack.
- Linux tools vendor Open Plug announced it had secured a $15m Round B funding in early October
- A la Mobile was started in June by entrepreneur-in-residence Pauline Alker with $3.5m seed funding and is believed to be looking to secure another $10m to fulfil its promise of 'the Red Hat of mobile'.
- In October, private equity firm Garnett & Helfrich Capital announced it had acquired a controlling stake in a privately held U.S. company Celunite , reportedly for $30 million. Celunite is a Sunnyvale, California-based provider of Linux-based open-source technology, which is still in stealth mode.
In this flurry of open source activity around mobile handsets, what are the opportunities for VCs?
Open source has the potential to be as disruptive for mobile handset software, as Google has been is for mobile operator 'closed garden' strategies. In other words, if you bank on the right player, the potential for returns are huge, as Linux and open-source software are garnering industry backing and market share.
However, the potential for failure in open source projects should not be understated. A la Mobile and Open Plug for example are very ambitious and high risk propositions. Investors and VCs looking at open source need to have both a very good understanding of handset technologies and the risks associated with open source licensing.
Read - VisionMobile (Andreas Constantinou blog)
Posted at 10:46 AM | TrackBack | Permalink
September 19, 2006
Baytech Backs Open Source Alternative To Microsoft Exchange Server
Open-Xchange, an open source messaging and collaboration server software startup based in Tarrytown, NY has raised a first round from Baytech Venture Capital in Munich. The investment in the company, which is rooted in Olper and Nurenberg, was announced last week.
The startup's software enables businesses and organizations to replace Microsoft Exchange Server for an open source alternative, as an example. It says it offers eleven different collaboration applications (calendars, document sharing, contacts etc.) and supports hot-desking and mobile access. It's targeted at the small and medium sized company.
What The User Sees On Their Open-Xchange Personal Portal Page
Baytech's Jochen Walter, told the a:c euro that the firm's product competes on scalability, greater integration features, and usability. His firm's opinion is that they are backing the market leader in the open source exchange and collaboration market.
We don't know how right he is on that because we haven't seen any trade rankings. There are certainly several competing open source packages, Zimbra, mentioned by Walter, but also OpenGroupware.org, exchange4linux and EGroupWare/PhpGroupWare, as well as commercial software from Scalix IBM/Lotus, Tobit, and Novel, according to Wikipedia (german version).
Given its competitive environment, this startup has appointed a board members that sounds like (on paper anyway) that could help it pull ahead. Take for example, Lee Dayton, a former IBM VP who particiapted in the Lotus, Tivoli, and Sequent acquisitions.
An angel investor, according to Computerwoche, and another board member is Richard Seibt, who after a stint as CEO of SUSE Linux eventually became European manager after it was acquired by Novell. He's also a former IBM man who is on the board at United Interent, a publicly traded German Internet service provider, and on the board of another venture-backed open source startup, Collax, which makes a Linux operating system that is meant to be easier to use than other Linux distribution on the market .
Another former SUSE exec, Rafael Laguna de la Vera, is chairman of the board. He was brought in as CEO of SUSE shortly before Novell acquired the company and left once the deal was done. And to help with future rounds, there is Bob Young, a former investment banker turned fund of fund manager that is in an LP in some big name US venture funds.
The startup raised a seed round when it was founded in 2005 from Laguna de la Vera, Young, and Seibt, according to Computerwoche.
The founders hail from Netline Internet Service, a German web-hosting firm. As we understand it they developed much of the software when Novell/SUSE was supporting it in open source development. After Novell acquired SUSE Linux, a German open source startup in late 2003 for $210M in cash, Novell eventually decided to use and market another software package for collaboration and email applications, and the Netline people started up Open-Xchange.
Read - Open-Xchange Closes Venture Funding(press release open-xchang)
Read- Open-Xchange hat weiteren Investor (computerwoche)
Posted at 05:23 AM | TrackBack | Permalink
August 01, 2006
Collax Moves To US, Gets Noticed
European founders take their open source startups to the US at pretty regular pace, such as Funambol, Xensource, and JBOSS. The latest is Collax, which is backed by Wellington and Atlas Ventures.
Its move appears to have merited coverage by several trade publications. In an article in the Linux Beacon, founder, Olaf Jacobi, delivers up some insight into the positioning and plans for this up and coming Linux vendor, while another trade journalist sees it giving Microsoft some new competition in vying for the server business in the small and medium sized business market.
Collax has on board Boris Nalbach, the former CTO of SUSE Linux, before Novell acquired it in 2003, and who was vice president of open source strategy in EMEA for Novell after the acquisition.
Read - The Linux Beacon--Collax Gears Up for North American Linux Launch (linux beacon)
Read - Chipping Away at the Microsoft Empire (channel insider)
Posted at 09:16 AM | TrackBack | Permalink
July 07, 2006
Italian Founder's Five Point Plan For Open Source Success
People keep asking Fabrizio Capobianco, an Italian serial entrepreneur who now heads up Funambol, a hot open source company that delivers Blackberry-beating software for mobilephones, the wrong question.
They ask how he created a profitable open source firm and achieved 500,000 downloads, which leaves him no choice but to answer that he was "lucky".
What they should be asking is : what are the five things you need to consider if you had to start up an open source company from scratch again? He provides the answer in his blog.
Read - How do you create a successful open source company? (funambol blog)
Posted at 11:41 AM | TrackBack | Permalink
July 06, 2006
VC-Backed Trolltech IPO Gets A Bounce
Shares in Norwegian mobile Linux software specialist Trolltech, which is venture backed, rose by nearly 10% on the Oslo stock exchange as the company completed its IPO, which was nearly two times oversubscribed, according to eetimes.
After its first day of trading, Trolltech's market cap is €116M based on the latest price published on the Oslo stock exchange.
It is the first IPO in Europe of an open source software company in the new (post bubble nuclear winter) cycle. We need to do a bit more digging but at this point it doesn't look like a Q-Cells-like return for its VCs.
Read - Mobile Linux developer hails successful IPO (eetimes)
Posted at 09:22 AM | TrackBack | Permalink
June 27, 2006
alarm:clock euro Venture Quiz
Do you know European venture industry past and present? If so, read on.
Because news is slow today, we have a quiz question for you: What was the name of the firm or fund that made the first VC investment in an open source software startup company based in Europe?
Don't cheat and use the VentureSource database. And here's a hint, it is not Index Ventures.
If you know the answer or want to guess the name of the firm and the startup, just click that Contact Us link to the right and fire off an email. The first to send the correct answer gets a random gift from one of our swag bags
... Today it's a brand new Orange 4-slot USB hub.
Posted at 02:50 PM | TrackBack | Permalink
June 26, 2006
French Linux Guru Starts Up Ulteo
As some people say, all it takes to create a new business is a resentment and a coffee-machine, or a case of Red Bull, if your under thirty.
And so it is with Ulteo, a French startup aiming to develop nothing less ambitious than a new open source approach to operating system software. Its founder is Gaël Duval, the key developer of Linux Mandrake, who was recently ousted from Mandriva, formerly known as Mandrakesoft, with nothing but a thank-you (he writes) and a "two-month standard" severance package.
NewsForge says that Duval is suing his former company, but more interesting is that he has formed Ulteo.
We're looking into the startup effort and can report that it is using the Kubuntu/Debian distribution (according to Wikipedia).
Duval created Linux-Mandrake in 1998 which was based on Red Hat Linux and it became known as being the easiest-to-use version of Linux. The company he formed around it was called Mandrakesoft, and later Mandriva.
Mandriva came close to insolvency several months after it floated on the lightly regulated Marche Libre in France in mid-2001, raising a meagre €4M. Our research shows that two investors, a US hedge fund and a French investment firm called Remote Reward stepped in to shore up finances.
In the meantime, it has changed its market focus and business model, in an effort to reach profitability. It has also acquired several other open source firms, namely Conectiva in Brazil, Edge IT in France, and Lycoris in the US.
Ulteo is based on an idea that Duval had brought to the Mandriva's management team back in 2004 that was ultimately rejected, he writes.
We think that there is going to be a lot more of this kind of thing in the coming 18 months due to the hefty number of startups that VCs have shopped to larger technology companies in M&A deals as they seek to exit bubble era invetments (as opposed to IPOs where it is more common for founders to stay on, that is if the founders are still with the company by the time it floats.)
As the post-merger key-man lock-ins end, and related non-compete clauses get lifted, founders are not retiring to Toscana to live the dolce vita, they are setting out to either repeat their past success, or make more money than they did last time around.
Examples abound, such as the post M&A activity of the founders of Kelkoo, acquired by Yahoo, and Musiwave, acquired by Openwave, who have since created Wikio and Eyeka, repsectively.
There are also reports about departures at SUSE Linux (acquired by Novell in 2003). Our research show that several founders and early employees have subsequently joined or create new startups.
Although not all of them actually begin with a resentment, the trend for founders to become serial entrepreneurs is pretty clear from where we sit.
Read - Gael Duvall's Fired Message (personal web page of Duval)
Read- NewsForge | Mandrake founder Gael Duval to sue Mandriva over firing (newsforge)
