Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corporation (NTT), Japan's largest telecommunications company, has formed a "wide-ranging strategic partnership" with EnterpriseDB that includes an undisclosed financial investment in the open-source database maker.

The NTT announcement follows news earlier this year that IBM had become an investor in EnterpriseDB.

"Many startup [database] vendors have one validating investment from a big company. It's pretty unusual, however, to have two," said Curt Monash, president of Monash Research.

NTT and EnterpriseDB will work together to improve the PostgreSQL database technology at the heart of the vendor's product line, focusing on high availability and scalability, and to promote adoption of PostgreSQL both within and outside NTT, according to a statement.

In an interview, EnterpriseDB CEO Ed Boyajian declined to reveal the size of NTT's investment, which he said had been in the works for "quite some time."

PostgreSQL, which competes with other open-source databases like Sun's MySQL, is "useful for a broad range of applications," Monash said. "There are many reasons not to port from your existing brand-name [database management system], but if you're looking at a new application, you should look very hard at PostgreSQL, rather than building on a closed-source DBMS."

For its part, EnterpriseDB has positioned itself as a ready alternative to the dominant proprietary vendors, releasing an update to its Advanced Server product last year that made it easier to run applications written for Oracle on its own system.

Boyajian said he expected NTT, which could not immediately be reached for comment Tuesday, to use EnterpriseDB for new projects and to replace other platforms.

The IDG News Service is a Network World affiliate.