db4objects, creator of the open source object database for Java and .NET has announced that Jerry Fiddler, founding CEO of the world's leading embedded software company Wind River, has joined the company's board of directors.

Fiddler, one of the most highly-respected software executives in Silicon Valley, pioneered off-the-shelf embedded software with the establishment of Wind River in 1981. Under Fiddler's tenure, Wind River has grown to become the leading provider of device software worldwide and achieved over $400M in annual sales. While building an international organization, Fiddler gained a reputation as an expert in the design and implementation of real-time systems, from the commonplace like digital cameras and routers, to the exotic like the Mars Rovers.

"I am extremely proud to welcome the single most recognizable expert on embedded software, Jerry Fiddler, to our company's board of directors," said Christof Wittig, CEO of db4objects. "Since our inception, we have focused on providing an embeddable object-oriented persistence solution to our customers like Boeing, Bosch, Seagate, and Intel. Jerry's unique experience in the embedded software industry will be an important contribution to the continued growth and management of db4objects."

"db4objects represents an exciting new way to create an enterprise, an efficient, sleek, and brilliantly leveraging modern technology and on-line community," said Jerry Fiddler. Fiddler further elaborates: "In the embedded software industry, open source is a central element. Open source has propelled db4objects into a unique position to take advantage of the growth of object-oriented platforms like Java and .NET. The flagship product db4o has become a widely used standard among OO developers. By making them native, open source, and embeddable, db4objects has put object databases back onto the map."

Fiddler Participates in Series B Financing

Fiddler also invested in db4objects' round B financing earlier this year. Besides the full participation of incumbent investors, db4objects welcomed Vinod Khosla (founding CEO of SUN Microsystems), Tim Howes (CTO of Opsware, inventor of the LDAP protocol), and Tim O'Reilly (O'Reilly Media) as the company's newest backers.

db4objects is privately funded by noted Silicon Valley pundits, with total investments in the low seven-figure range. db4objects' chairman Mark Leslie, founding CEO of Veritas, explains: "We do not seek institutional venture capital. Over the past eighteen months we have demonstrated that we can make great progress under a low cost structure and did not want to get on the 'funding treadmill'. We leverage db4o's huge and passionate user community to create word-of-mouth recommendations rather than evangelize our customers with costly and annoying outbound sales and marketing activities."