Engine Yard acquires Orchestra. Red Hat considers NoSQL move. And more.

# Engine Yard announced a definitive agreement to acquire Orchestra, bringing PHP expertise to the Engine Yard platform.

# Red Hat’s CEO indicated the company is interested in a NoSQL or Hadoop acquisition.

# Gluster announced Apache Hadoop compatibility in the next GlusterFS release.

# Microsoft signed an agreement with China Standard Software Co (CS2C) to …

InternetNews.com yesterday published an article based on an interview with Red Hat CEO Jim Whitehurst asking the question “Is Red Hat Interested in the Database Market?”

In truth there was no real need to ask the question, as Whitehurst’s comments made it pretty clear that Red Hat is interested in the database market, and specifically the NoSQL database market.

“When I say I don’t want to be a database company, I’m saying that I don’t want to be a SQL database company,” Whitehurst said.

In case the implications of that statement were not entirely clear, he later added:

“But we would be very interested in a NoSQL type database or Hadoop type thing,” Whitehurst said. “Those are interesting as they represent net new.”

The article adds that Whitehurst would not …

Couchbase raises $14m. AppFog raises $8m. Much ado about Percona Live MySQL Conference and Expo. And more.

# Couchbase raised $14m in series C funding for its NoSQL database.

# AppFog raised $8m series B funding for its PHP-based platform-as-a-service.

# Percona announced its plans to host a Percona Live MySQL Conference and Expo on April 10-12, effectively replacing the O’Reilly MySQL Conference and Expo.

# The announcement sparked some rumblings of discomfort around the MySQL community with Giuseppe Maxia and …

We’ve written about how a bad economy is indeed good for open source software. We’ve also recognized that with open source software’s maturity and place at the enterprise software table, a bad economy can be a double-edged sword for open source since the failure or fade of large enterprise customers, say big banks, hurts open source vendors right alongside traditional software providers.

What is interesting is that after a couple of years of economic rebuilding, we’ve seen recently how open source is being driven by innovation, particularly in cloud computing, …

Opscode appoints a new CEO. SugarCRM gains a new CFO. And more.

# Opscode named Mitch Hill as CEO, with Jesse Robbins becoming Chief Community Officer.

# SugarCRM claimed billings up 58% in Q2 and appointed a new CFO.

# Tasktop released Tasktop Dev 2.1 and announced Tasktop Sync 1.0.

# Pentaho delivered improved support for Hadoop …

Google and Microsoft trade patent claims. Actuate announces Q2 results. And more.

# Google accused Microsoft, Oracle, Apple and other companies of organising a hostile patent campaign against Android. That prompted Microsoft executives to claim that Microsoft invited Google to be involved in the CPTN purchase of Novell’s patents. However, Google explained that joining CPTN might have decreased its ability to defend itself against potential patent claims.

# Actuate announced its Q2 …

Open Cloud Initiative launches. HP joins OpenStack. Oracle releases Java 7. And more.

# The Open Cloud Initiative launched to drive open standards in cloud computing.

# HP announced its support for OpenStack.

# Oracle announced the availability of Java SE 7. The Apache Software Foundation warned of index corruption and crashes in Apache Lucene and Solr.

# Nebula …

I wrote last year about the way Google’s Android mobile operating system was serving as a more open alternative to Apple’s iOS, but not so open that it didn’t leave opportunity for an even more open alternative.

Given that we continue to see software patent-based attacks on Android, as well as swirling FUD around coverage of the attacks and never ending suits and settlements and courtroom developments, it is clear it will be a long time before any of this legal business is ever close to settled, unless ended by settlements first, which is likely.

However, I’m more interested in the technology in the meantime. I also think it’s interesting to see, if not a ‘more open’ …

CloudBees raises $10.5m. Microsoft commits $100m to SUSE. And more.

# CloudBees secured $10.5m in Series B venture funding.

# Microsoft renewed its vows with Attachmate’s SUSE business unit, committing to invest $100m in new SUSE Linux Enterprise certificates over the next four years.

# Oracle announced that it has acquired Ksplice, twhioch offers zero downtime update technology for Linux.

# Ingres announced that Steve Shine has been named Chief Executive Officer and President.

# Dell …

A herd of Hadoop announcements. Rockmelt raises $30m. And more.

A herd of Hadoop announcements
# Yahoo! and Benchmark Capital confirmed the formation of Hortonworks, an independent company focused on the development and support of Apache Hadoop.

# Cloudera announced the availability of Cloudera Enterprise 3.5 and the launch of Cloudera SCM Express, based on the new Service and Configuration Manager in Cloudera Enterprise 3.5.

# MapR …