InfoScape Inc, the San Francisco-based Java enterprise development tools company has poached Oracle Corp executive Richard French to be its new chief executive and has secured its second round of venture capital funding, this time to the tune of $4m. InfoScape’s co-founder Paul King, who apparently wanted to get out of the president and CEO position, has moved upstairs to an unspecified role. French is the former VP of Oracle’s enterprise platform division, and was previously at Sun Microsystems Inc, Hewlett-Packard Co, Compaq Computer Corp, Digital Equipment Corp and Novell Inc. The series B financing comes from IAI Ventures Inc with additional funding from InfoScape’s original backer, Redleaf Venture Management. It was apparently IAI that put French and InfoScape together. He left Oracle Friday and started at InfoScape Monday. Version 3.0 of Fresco, the company’s flagship Java database toolset, will ship next month and the company also says the intention is still to produce a vertical market version of the product.
