Red-hot Apache Spark startup Databricks is starting off the new year with a series of top leadership changes that it says will help the company manage rapid growth and hit key targets for 2016. Here are the details from Databricks, which was founded by Spark's creators:
Effective today, the changes include current CEO, Ion Stoica, will be appointed Executive Chairman; current Vice President of Engineering and Product, Ali Ghodsi, will become CEO; current Director of Engineering, Patrick Wendell, will be appointed Vice President of Engineering; and Ron Gabrisko joins the company as a Senior Vice President of Worldwide Sales.
"As the creators and drivers of the Spark engine, Databricks is at an inflection point where the pace of innovation coming from the community positions us for tremendous growth and opportunity in 2016. Ali is poised to enable both Databricks and Spark to seek widespread enterprise adoption, momentum, and customer acquisition. I'm enthused to see what he will accomplish in the years to come," said Ion Stoica, executive chairman at Databricks.
Databricks' CEO, Ali Ghodsi, said, "I am honored and excited to lead Databricks in our mission to dramatically simplify big data processing and free users to focus on turning their data into value. The pace at which Databricks is growing and flourishing is largely due to Ion's vision and dedication to the company's mission; I look forward to working with him in this new capacity."
Spark's Executive Moves Are Also About the Competition, Not Just Growth
The ecosystem around Spark is growing quickly and dramatically, evidenced by events such as IBM's announcement last year of a major Spark research and development initiative. [Read Constellation VP and principal analyst Doug Henschen's in-depth analysis of that news right here.]
Despite the encroachment of such heavyweights on the Spark market, Databricks claims to have the most paying customers for its Spark platform, with more than 200. It's also the biggest contributor of code to Apache Spark, outpacing other companies by a factor of 10, according to a statement.
It remains to be seen how the leadership changes impact Databricks' fortunes moving forward, but they aren't terribly surprising given what the company faces.
"Databricks is under tremendous pressure to mature Apache Spark quickly, so rapid development and decisive leadership are essential," Henschen says. "Spark encompasses many separate projects—SQL, R, streaming, machine learning and more—and it's very tricky keeping all of those initiatives moving along and ahead of competitive threats."
"IBM and Cloudera are both grabbing a lot of mindshare and putting a lot of development chips on Spark," Henschen adds. "There's a danger that Databricks will be eclipsed in terms of notoriety. There's no question that Databricks is the founding firm and leader of the project, but they have a tiger by the tail. It's notable that they brought in Gabrisko, a guy with deep enterprise software sales experience, to join the team. It's a complement to the data-science background of the company's founding team."
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