Eucalyptus Nabs Ex-MySQL CEO. Challenges Still Remain

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Marten Mickos the former CEO of open source database vendor MySQL has a new job. He’s now the CEO of open source cloud software vendor Eucalyptus.

It’s an interesting move for both Mickos and Eucalyptus, though I personally see a number of serious and significant hurdles.

The only reason why I’ve ever even heard of Eucalyptus is because of Ubuntu Linux which includes the open source side of the technology as part of its distribution.

Eucalyptus went commercial in April of last year after raising over $5 million in capital.

The way I understand the Eucalytpus model is as an Open Core vendor – that is there is the open source version then there is the Enterprise version which adds extra features on top. Thanks to Ubuntu, there is a wide number of Eucalyptus downloads (as it’s part of Ubuntu Server), but it’s not at all clear to me how well that can translate into revenues for Eucalyptus as a corporate enterprise.

 It’s a similar challenge to one that Mickos faced with MySQL in that MySQL is included in nearly ever enterprise Linux distribution, but that doesn’t always translate into revenues. The added challenge for Eucalyptus here is the fact that Red Hat isn’t necessarily in their corner.