Greenplum, sponsor of Bizgres.org, the project that is making PostgreSQL the world's most robust open source database for business intelligence (BI), has announced that it has hired Mark Kirkwood, a PostgreSQL contributor and deep database technologist. Kirkwood will focus full-time on advancing PostgreSQL capabilities for BI and data warehousing through the Bizgres.org project.

"In less than one year, Bizgres.org has become a leading community project, contributing important enterprise BI features and enhancements to PostgreSQL," said Luke Lonergan, CTO, Greenplum. "Mark's experience, hard work and enthusiasm further strengthen a great Bizgres team working to make PostgreSQL the world's best open source database for BI."

Mark Kirkwood has been an active user and community member of PostgreSQL and has contributed several code modules to the PostgreSQL Global Group. Mark previously spent several years at Oracle, working as a developer in the areas of performance tuning and database administration. At Greenplum, Mark will focus his Bizgres research and development on resource management, throughput optimization and access methods.

"I am very excited to join Greenplum, as I believe that the timing is right for an open source-powered data warehouse product," said Kirkwood. "My role at Greenplum will allow me to focus full-time on contributing to Bizgres.org and working with other leading developers and organizations around the world to develop critical enterprise-class features for PostgreSQL."

Over the past year, the Bizgres.org community has quickly grown to thousands of organizations worldwide. Bizgres.org has been responsible for several key PostgreSQL innovations, including on-disk bitmap indexing, which is unique within open source databases, as well as table partitioning and enhancements to sort performance.

Bizgres.org is a truly open, multi-vendor community that has attracted leading developers and companies from around the world. Mark Kirkwood joins other key Bizgres community members, including Josh Berkus (PostgreSQL Core Team), Alon Goldshuv (Greenplum), Barry Klawans (JasperSoft), Luke Lonergan (Greenplum), Simon Riggs (EnterpriseDB), Nicholas Wakefield (Kinetic Networks) and Jie Zhang (UC Davis).