TechWeek: Microsoft Makes Search Sense

Dargo left for personal reasons and still maintains a blog on the Ingres home page, but the others apparently left in a snit. One former executive says, "This was a great idea, but Ingres isn't getting traction in the marketplace." He also says there was a good deal of tension between COO Roger Burkhardt and the rest of the executive team.

CFO Tom Berquist, a one-time sell-side analyst, is very much still in place. "We had a crazy first year. It was very stressful, and some people left for opportunities that were probably less stressful," he says.

How is the company doing? "We beat our first-year plan. Our plan for this year is aggressive -- it calls for 60% [top-line] growth," he says.

Unlike some of his brasher rivals in the open-source database business, Berquist makes no pretense of beating Oracle into the ground. "Oracle is at the top of the pyramid; we're at the bottom. But there is a lot of room at the lower end of the market."