Vertica Systems, a stealthy start-up building a fast new database management system that runs on Linux-based hardware, has started to break its silence.

The company this week said it has raised a fresh $16.5 million in venture funding, bringing its total to $23.5 million. What's more, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers general partner Ray Lane – Oracle's ex-president and COO – will serve as a special advisor to Vertica. Kleiner Perkins and New Enterprise Associates led the funding round.

The Andover, Mass., company, co-founded in 2005 by Michael Stonebraker of Ingres and Postgres database system fame, also has named Jerry Held, former Oracle senior vice president, as its chairman. Held is currently the head of a consulting firm bearing his name.

Stonebraker, the company's CTO, is also listed as CTO for another company he started called StreamBase Systems.

Vertica describes its offering as a “grid-enabled, column-oriented relational database management system” that runs on industry standard hardware. It is designed to handle data warehousing, business intelligence, fraud detection and other applications, even in environments with hundreds of terabytes of data. The company says its technology can be used to execute queries 100 times faster than traditional row-oriented relational database management systems.

Vertica's product is in beta testing and the company is inviting those who want to be early adopters to give it a whirl. The start-up plans to use its new funding to help bring the Vertica Database to market this year.

HP and Red Hat are listed among Vertica's partners.