Stories about: Benchmark Capital

Venture capital investment in network companies hit another low during the first quarter, with the total number of investments dropping to its lowest point since the third quarter of 2004.

Few reports have surfaced of security breaches in virtual-server environments, but the potential looms large.

In agreeing this week to pay US$1 billion for MySQL, Sun Microsystems said it hopes to make MySQL's open-source database more attractive to enterprise users. But Sun has a lot of work to do, according to some MySQL users.

Not all the data-leak start-ups have been snapped up by the big guys. Here are five data-leak-prevention companies to keep an eye on.

New companies have to be brash to enter the network security market, given that the industry has witnessed an explosion in creativity over the past five years and considering that big players such as Microsoft and IBM increasingly are throwing their weight around in security.

From business intelligence to CRM, from scheduling and e-procurement to database management and data governance, there is no shortage of enterprise applications available to help businesses make their processes more efficient. Choosing can be difficult, however: Do you go open source? Software-as-a-service, or in-house deployment? Every vendor has a sales pitch. Here are 10 worth watching.

Open source software is a given in most enterprise data centers, so it's not surprising to see the ranks of open source companies and projects swell. It's not just Linux anymore - community-developed software is offering alternatives for everything from databases to application servers to network management to disaster preparedness. How do you know which open source approach is right for you? We've pulled out a few start-ups that you might not be familiar with, but we think should be on your radar.

MySQL has secured US$18.5 million in its latest round of venture capital funding, the open-source database vendor announced Monday. The company plans to spend the money on new product development and expanding its sales and marketing operations. The investors include the venture capital arms of Intel and enterprise applications vendor SAP.

A California startup backed by US$4 million in venture funding and a team of former Juniper Networks executives says that it has developed a way to make networking products and applications more secure. Mu Security says it will soon begin selling a new vulnerability assessment product that lets technology vendors and enterprise developers test their products with known hacker techniques, allowing them to fix bugs before products are put into use.

Nearly a year after quitting his job as chief technology officer at BEA Systems, Scott Dietzen has resurfaced. He is now serving as president and chief technology officer of little-known California, start-up Liquid Systems, a venture-funded software company that is focused on enterprise messaging and collaboration, according to sources familiar with the company's plans.

Wi-Fi, despite opposition from vendors of competing technologies, will grow and add new capabilities, with voice over Wi-Fi services available in about two years, said speakers at the WiFi/VoWiFi Planet Conference and Expo.