On 451 Group’s CAOS Theory blog, Matthew Aslett announced that venture investment in open source technologies has reached an all-time high for investments in the first quarter of 2008. According to 451 Group, these investments reached over $200 million, beating the previous record ($193 million in the fourth quarter of 2006). About 20 deals were closed last quarter, against 17 in the last quarter of 2006, and the average was $12 million a piece.

This is great news, given the “low” level of investments in 2007. 451’s projections are excellent for the entire year and even if they don’t reach 2006’s all time high, they will be higher than in 2007. Venture funding is critical for open source vendors and helps them start operations, and spread the word through marketing!

As a conclusion, I would like to remind you that Gartner recently announced that by 2012, 90% of organizations in the world will use open source technologies either directly or embedded (0.0 to 1.0 probability).

Bertrand