Date -2008-10-07
NTT Group and EnterpriseDB Announce Comprehensive Partnership to Advance PostgreSQL and to Drive Enterprise Adoption
Companies to Collaborate on Highly Scalable Distributed Database Environments; NTT Group Makes Equity Investment in EnterpriseDB
TOKYO, Oct. 7, 2008 - Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corporation (NTT) (NYSE: NTT), the largest telecommunications company in Japan, and EnterpriseDB, the leading enterprise open source database company, announced today that they have entered into a wide-ranging strategic partnership that includes an equity investment in EnterpriseDB by NTT Investment Partners, Inc. (NTT-IP), a wholly owned subsidiary of NTT. Under the partnership, NTT and EnterpriseDB will collaborate to enhance and extend PostgreSQL and related technologies, especially in areas such as scalability and high availability, which are of particular importance in large-scale distributed database environments in data centers. NTT and EnterpriseDB will also collaborate to drive enterprises, including the NTT operating companies, to adopt PostgreSQL. PostgreSQL is already considered by many to be the world's most advanced open source database and is the foundation of EnterpriseDB's Postgres Plus product family.
Collaboration to Advance PostgreSQL and Related Technologies
The principal goal of the partnership is to add new features to PostgreSQL and related technologies through collaborative contributions to the PostgreSQL community. Initially, NTT and EnterpriseDB will finalize and submit synchronous replication, a key technology for highly available database systems. This technology was originally developed for PostgreSQL by NTT's Open Source Software Center. Additional scalability and high-availability enhancements appropriate for large-scale distributed database environments, including features based on GridSQL, EnterpriseDB's open source parallel query technology, will follow.
Collaboration to Drive Enterprise Adoption
Other goals of the partnership include studying and developing a high availability solution powered by synchronous replication, which will be released as part of EnterpriseDB's Postgres Plus product family in the near future. The solution will enable enterprises to construct reliable systems using PostgreSQL. Also, EnterpriseDB will work with NTT to accelerate the deployment of Postgres Plus and other PostgreSQL-related technologies in the NTT operating companies' operations and business support systems and in other companies.
Extending the partnership between NTT Group and EnterpriseDB, NTT-IP has made an equity investment in EnterpriseDB through its investment fund, NTT Investment Partners Funds, L.P. NTT-IP joins existing investors IBM (NYSE: IBM), Sony Online Entertainment, Fidelity Ventures, Charles River Ventures, and Valhalla Partners.
"NTT has an organization-wide commitment to leverage open source software for its many benefits, including cost savings, software quality, and the ability to trouble-shoot the code ourselves. NTT aims to exploit these benefits by deploying open source software for next-generation service areas, such as platform as a service," said Noritaka Uji, senior executive vice president, NTT. "We believe this partnership will accelerate PostgreSQL community contribution and the creation of enhancements required by mega-scale carriers such as NTT and other operators of highly scalable distributed database environments. We are pleased to partner with EnterpriseDB, the world's foremost PostgreSQL experts, for the benefit of NTT, the Japanese market, and the worldwide PostgreSQL community."
"NTT's strategic partnership with and equity investment in EnterpriseDB, especially when viewed alongside similar investments in our company by IBM and Sony Online Entertainment, is a b endorsement of PostgreSQL and Postgres Plus, which provide meaningful choice in the otherwise proprietary and expensive enterprise database market," said Ed Boyajian, chief executive officer, EnterpriseDB. "We are honored to have this opportunity to collaborate with the PostgreSQL experts in NTT's Open Source Software Center."
About NTT
The NTT Group has led the development of telecommunications in Japan for more than a century. The major companies that comprise the NTT Group continue to accommodate the emerging needs of the ubiquitous broadband society in the 21st century, while fulfilling their social mission in each business field in an increasingly competitive global market environment.
NTT founded the Open Source Software Center (NTT OSSC) in April 2006 to provide support services and technical information about open source software to the NTT family of companies and to contribute to open source communities. NTT OSSC has been promoting the deployment of PostgreSQL in the NTT family of companies and has contributed advanced features and bug reports to the PostgreSQL community.
NTT-IP was established in February 2008 as a wholly owned subsidiary of NTT. NTT-IP is the fund manager of NTT Investment Partners Fund, L.P., an investment limited partnership fund established in March 2008 for the purpose of investing in domestic and foreign venture-backed companies that possess a variety of technologies and know-how in the information- and communications-related fields.
About EnterpriseDB
EnterpriseDB is the leading provider of enterprise-class products and services based on PostgreSQL, the world's most advanced open source database. The company's Postgres Plus products are ideally suited for transaction-intensive applications requiring superior performance, massive scalability, and compatibility with proprietary database products. EnterpriseDB has offices in North America, Europe, and Asia. The company was founded in 2004 and is headquartered in Edison, N.J. For more information, please call +1-732-331-1300 or visit www.enterprisedb.com.
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EnterpriseDB and Postgres Plus are trademarks of EnterpriseDB Corporation. Other names may be trademarks of their respective owners.
Media Contact
Christian Danella
Prequent, Inc. (for EnterpriseDB Corporation)
christian@prequent.com
+1-408-275-6488 (office)
+1-415-350-4830 (mobile)
Takeshi Tachi
Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corporation
contact@oss.ntt.co.jp
+81-3-5860-5100