SAP Cofounder Backs New Open Source Forum (UPDATED)

Thu, October 26, 2006

Since this story was originally posted, it has been updated to correct the date on which the Open Source Forum will take place.

Hasso Plattner, the billionaire cofounder of business software maker SAP, has teamed with IBM and Deutsche Telekom to host a forum aimed at giving open-source software entrepreneurs an opportunity to present their business ideas to venture capitalists and other IT experts.

The Open Source Forum will take place for the first time on Nov. 7 in Potsdam, Germany, in the Hasso Plattner Institute for Software Systems Engineering, the forum organizers said Thursday.

The daylong forum offers open-source startups a platform to present their business ideas to potential investors in the venture capital community and the IT industry, according to the organizers.

Additionally, the program will provide a mix of presentations from open-source experts, including Steve Hand from the University of Cambridge, England, and Adam Jollans from IBM.

In collaboration with the University of Potsdam, Plattner launched the institute in 1998 to support talented software systems engineers.

Taking a cue from his venture capital buddies in Palo Alto, Calif., where he lives part time, Plattner about a year later also launched Hasso Plattner Ventures Management, which provides early-stage investment for software entrepreneurs. Around 40 million euros (US$50 million) comes from Plattner, with the remainder from Germany’s InvestitionsBank des Landes Brandenburg and CMEA Ventures in San Francisco.

Earlier this year, the venture invested in two German startups: Facton in Dresden and Inchron in Erlangen. Facton software can be used to analyze, simulate and optimize manufacturing costs from the initial conception of a product to the start of production. Inchron software can simulate, even before a prototype is manufactured, the real-time behavior of "embedded systems."

Details about the Open Source Forum are available at Hasso Plattner’s website.

-John Blau, IDG News Service (Dusseldorf Bureau)

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