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Enterprise Software - Tuesday, January 22, 2008

Open Source's Zenoss Boasts 500K Downloads + $11M Investment

Buoyed by the recent $1B buyout of its open source brother MySQL, Open source network and systems management software firm Zenoss says it has crossed the 500K downloads threshold and his raised an $11M round. The investment was led by Grotech Capital, a leading venture firm with more than $1 billion under management. Existing investors Intersouth Partners, Boulder Ventures and the Maryland Department of Business and Economic Development also participated.

Erik Dahl launched Zenoss development in 2002 and in August 2005 founded Zenoss Inc. with Bill Karpovich. Zenoss provides corporate backing for the development of Zenoss Core, which is freely available to anyone to download and use without license fees. The firm offers paid support subscriptions and training services to generate revenue.

Zenoss in action

Zenoss competes with other pen source systems management products like GroundWork Open Source, Hyperic and Qlusters. How is Zenoss different? SaysBill Karpovich:

"Companies like GroundWork are similar to the Red Hat approach, where a company gathers up the pieces and puts support behind it. Our approach is we have always had the code and we are in control of its roadmap and indemnification. The Hyperic model is where a company comes from a commercial background and makes some of the code open source."

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