Another scalable database platform for the OpenStack cloud has entered the open source fold. This week, Tesora made its database-as-a-service (DBaaS) software available to the open source community.

The software, called the Tesora Database Virtualization Engine, is designed to provide database services that can scale on demand within the cloud. It allows customers to handle workloads "that exceed the capabilities of a single database server, while only provisioning, consuming and paying for the capacity that you need at any given instant," according to the company.

Tesora said in a statement it decided to make the database software open source "to encourage broader, and easier, adoption of [its] database virtualization engine technology. The open sourcing of Tesora's DVE has allowed Tesora to cement the company's ties to its partners in the MySQL community including Percona, the oldest and largest independent MySQL support, consulting, managed services, training and software development provider. This is also more consistent with Tesora's commitment to the open source DBaaS project, Trove, which was recently released as part of the OpenStack Icehouse release."

Strengthening Tesora's relationship with partners such as Percona is only part of the story, though. The company is also building a revenue stream based on the newly open source product by offering a value-added commercial version alongside the freely available community edition of the software. The commercial enterprise edition features support, a Web user interface and installer packages for major Linux distributions, including Canonical's Ubuntu and Red Hat Enterprise Linux.

The community/enterprise-edition model is a tried and true one in the open source world, and it promises to make Tesora's offerings more competitive at a time when the explosion of the OpenStack cloud, and the rise of new types of database solutions to support it, are redefining the cloud storage landscape.