Open-source database vendor Greenplum Inc. had cause for celebration Tuesday, announcing both US$15 million in venture capital financing and the appointment of a new CEO.

The startup named Sun Microsystems Inc. veteran Bill Cook as its new head. He spent 19 years at Sun and held a variety of positions there including most recently a three-year stint as senior vice president of sales. After leaving Sun, Cook took on a similar role heading up sales and services at Linux hardware and clustering company Penguin Computing Inc.

In August 2006, Greenplum announced a partnership with Sun to develop dedicated data warehousing appliances using the startup's database and the Sun Fire X4500 hardware server running Sun's Solaris operating system. The two companies Tuesday unveiled their first customer for the Sun Data Warehouse Appliance, Smart Communications Inc., the leading wireless service provider in the Philippines.

Based on the open-source PostgreSQL database, Greenplum has developed its commercial open-source databases -- Greenplum aimed at users of data warehousing software and Bizgres to support BI (business intelligence) applications.

Sierra Ventures led the $15 million financing round in Greenplum. Three previous investors in the startup, venture capital companies Mission Ventures, Dawntreader Ventures and EDF Ventures, respectively, also contributed. Greenplum will additionally benefit from the $4 million line of credit that Comerica Bank is making available to the company, the vendor said.

Greenplum, which is based in San Mateo, California, plans to use the funds to continue development of its database as well as to expand its sales and marketing efforts around the world. That expansion is already under way, with Greenplum on Tuesday also announcing the establishment of its Asia-Pacific regional headquarters in Singapore under the leadership of former Netezza Corp. executive Vinay Samuel. Netezza is a player in the data warehousing appliance market.

The IDG News Service is a Network World affiliate.