Mr. Merriman (ny.tie.org)

Look out, Oracle: a swiftly-growing open source startup could be coming for you. 10gen, the New York-headquartered database company that boasts clients like Foursquare, MTV and Disney, announced today that it had raised a $42 million round led by New Enterprise Associates.

CEO Dwight Merriman said in a statement:

We want to change the database market, to make MongoDB the best way for companies to build new applications. Our goal is to give tech teams not only a database that scales to any big data level required but also helps developers be productive and more nimble.

10gen has worked feverishly to establish itself as an innovative open source database company with strong ties to the New York tech scene. When we spoke with 10gen CTO Eliot Horowitz last month following a recent partnership with Red Hat, he told us that 10gen's need for systems engineers--and not just app builders-- is "bringing an entirely different type of engineer to New York, and it's good for the overall ecosystem. Long-term it makes the engineering talent pool much wider and deeper.”

We're sure that this new hefty chunk of change will serve New York's budding systems geeks quite well.