EnterpriseDB has launched two new versions of its open-source database, Postgres. The company has introduced Postgres Plus and Postgres Plus Server.

The company also announced that its GridSQL, which allows PostgreSQL databases to run on a grid basis, will be offered to the open source community, having previously been entirely proprietary. The company will bundle GridSQL with its database management system to form the new Postgres Plus family. In addition, the company has overhauled its licensing.

Postgres Plus, the successor to EnterpriseDB Postgres, offers a variety of new features, advanced replication capabilities and a parallel query engine allowing applications to handle huge amounts of data. EnterpriseDB's CEO Andy Astor said that the parallel query engine would be particularly attractive to enterprises. "It's a technology that allows complex queries to be sorted quicker." Postgres Plus Advanced Server offers users a number of additional features, including the ability to run applications created for Oracle as well as dynamic tuning of databases.

The Postgres Plus family also includes "Developer QuickStarts," which the company said made it easier to adopt a number of architectures and methodologies, including Ruby on Rails, JBoss SEAM, and REST architectures. QuickStarts are also offered for other open source applications such as Drupal. The company hopes to issue more QuickStarts in coming weeks.

Astor said that the new licensing arrangements would mean that Postgres would be particularly attractive. "We've designed the licensing to be on about 25 percent of Oracle pricing." He admitted however that the company would find it hard to disturb the entrenched Oracle user base but said that there was plenty of room in the open source market. "The open source database market is estimated to be $200 million with a compound annual growth of 120 percent. It's estimated that this will grow to about $18 billion - that's going to be our primary market."

Astor said that the company now offered users simplicity, choice and enhanced performance. "There are a lot of features that are going to be appealing. A massive performance enhancement at the lowest level but that performance scales beautifully even as you go to a massive cluster."

EnterpriseDB has also announced that IBM has taken a share of the company. It has just closed a US$10 million refinancing round in which IBM is one of the investors.