Couchbase, a NoSQL company formed after the merger of CouchOne and Membase, had a couple of big announcements today. The first is the launch of its first product, the open source Couchbase Server. Couchbase Server is based on the world’s most deployed NoSQL solution, Apache CouchDB, which is the core database behind Canonical’s Ubuntu One cloud service and is used by Apple, The BBC, CERN and Mozilla as well as others, totaling a userbase of 1.5 million.

“With CouchDB at its core, Couchbase Server’s schema-free document model is perfect for web applications. Its built-in JavaScript-based map/reduce-indexing engine is a powerful way to analyze and query data. It has unmatched peer-based replication capabilities, allowing full queries, updates and additions, even while disconnected from the network.”

Cloudbase Server leverages the standard HTTP protocol as well as geospatial indexing via its open-source GeoCouch, which enable developers to easily integrate Cloudbase Server with other languages, as well as create location-aware applications.

Available in 2 free versions for Windows, Red Hat Linux and Mac OS X Couchbase Server seems o target a fairly large audience. The Entire Edition is targeting organizations looking to use the database technology, and the Community Edition seems to be aiming at “developers or hobbyists”.

In addition to its product launch, Couchbase also announced today the formation of a new Board of Advisors. The board includes some big name industry veterans from Cloudera, Facebook, Google and others, most notably Cloudera CEO Michael Olson; Roy Fieldin, the founder of the Apache HTTP Server Project and Apache Software Foundation (who also wrote the HTTP and URI standards) and Concurrent founder and CTO Chris Wensel. Additional members include Zynga CTO Cadir Lee, Steve Sounders who leads web performance and open source initiatives for Google, as well as others.