The Hortonworks team offers an exceptional blend of Apache Hadoop development experience and commercial open source operational expertise. The company is backed by both Yahoo!, the premier digital media company and Benchmark Capital, a preeminent venture capital firm that has backed other successful technology companies such as eBay, Red Hat, SpringSource and Twitter.
Rob Bearden - CEO
Rob is the former chief operating officer of both SpringSource and JBoss, two of the most commercially successful open source companies in history. Rob also served in senior roles at Oracle, where he directed a $1 billion sales organization, I2 and Manhattan Associates. He currently sits on the boards of Black Duck and EnterpriseDB, two successful and well-regarded vendors in the open source industry. Rob has a Bachelor’s degree in Business Management from Jacksonville State University and currently holds the title of Entrepreneur-in-Residence at the University of Georgia’s Terry College of Business.
Eric Baldeschwieler – CTO
Prior to co-founding Hortonworks, Eric served as VP Hadoop Software Engineering for Yahoo!, where he led the evolution of Apache Hadoop from a 20 node prototype to a 42,000 node service that is behind every click at Yahoo!. Eric also served as a technology leader for Inktomi’s web service engine, which Yahoo! acquired in 2003. Prior to Inktomi, Eric developed software for video games, video post production systems and 3D modeling systems. Eric has a Master’s degree in Computer Science from the University of California, Berkeley and a Bachelor’s degree in Mathematics and Computer Science from Carnegie Mellon University. Follow Eric on Twitter: @jeric14.
Herb Cunitz – President
Herb Cunitz brings 25 years of experience building sales, consulting, training, marketing and operations teams for emerging enterprise software companies. Herb is responsible for global sales, marketing and support activities at Hortonworks. Herb was most recently responsible for global field operations for the vFabric Cloud Application Platform division of VMware and was responsible for global sales of the application run-time and data products/services that as part of the Cloud Application Platform. Prior to that Herb was most running worldwide field operations for SpringSource – an open source software company acquired by VMware in 2009. Herb also spent 10 years at IBM in NY in various positions, including Sales/Marketing Manager for NY and US Marketing Executive for Desktop Operating Systems. Herb has an MBA in Finance from New York University Stern School of Business and a BS in Electrical Engineering from Columbia University in New York.
Shaun Connolly – VP Corporate Strategy
Shaun has more than 20 years of experience in the software industry, with a track record of building early stage and midsize software companies into successful market leaders. Shaun was previously VP of Product Strategy at VMware where he focused on defining VMware’s cloud application platform vision. Shaun has also held VP and Director level positions at SpringSource, Red Hat, JBoss, Princeton Softech, HP, Bluestone Software, and Primavera Systems. He holds a B.S. in Electrical Engineering from Drexel University. Follow Shaun on Twitter: @shaunconnolly.
Mitch Ferguson – VP Business Development
Mitch has helped to establish and execute global business development and channel strategies with enterprise software companies from early-stage through IPO, including SpringSource, Arbor Software and Vitria Technology. Most recently Mitch started Business Development at SpringSource, which contributed to it being acquired by VMware. At VMware, Mitch led strategic partnership efforts for VMware’s vFabric cloud platform with companies like salesforce.com. Mitch holds an MBA from the University of Maryland, and a B.S. from the University of South Carolina. Follow Mitch on Twitter: @rmfergy.
David McJannet - VP Marketing
Dave has more than 15 years of extensive experience across a range of product marketing, product management, and operational functions. Prior to joining Hortonworks, Dave led the product marketing team at VMware for a number of technologies including the Cloud Foundry Platform as a Service project and the vFabric product family. Previously, Dave served as Group Manager, Server & Tools at Microsoft where his team had responsibility for the product marketing and overall performance of the Server and Tools business in Canada. Before joining Microsoft he held product management roles at webMethods (now SoftwareAG) with a primary focus on Enterprise Application Integration (EAI) and middleware products. Dave began his career with KPMG and earned his Bachelor of Arts degree in Economics from McGill University.
Bob Page - VP Products
Prior to joining Hortonworks, Bob was vice president of analytics platform and delivery at eBay, Inc., where he managed and evolved eBay’s data efforts, data and analytics platforms, applications and services, including one of the industry’s largest Apache Hadoop deployments. Prior to eBay, Bob served as senior director of strategic data solutions at Yahoo!, where he built the Yahoo! experimentation platform, led business intelligence, and the data operations team, among others. Bob holds a B.S. in Computer Science from Fitchburg State College.
Dan Bradford - VP Finance
Dan has more than fourteen years of finance experience in the technology industry. Most recently he served as VP of Finance and Operations for Appcelerator, an open source platform for mobile application development. He has also held senior financial roles for JBoss, an open source middleware provider (acquired by Red Hat), BellSouth Intelliventures (now YellowPages.com) and MindSpring Enterprises (later EarthLink). Dan holds an MBA, Finance emphasis from the University of Georgia and a B.A. in Communications, Advertising emphasis from the University of Alabama. Follow Dan on Twitter: @danbradford.
Ulf Sandberg – VP Services
Prior to joining Hortonworks, Sandberg was CEO of SkySQL where he helped establish and guide the company as the principle provider of MySQL-related open-source database technologies and services. Before SkySQL, Sandberg was senior vice president of MySQL Global Services where he was responsible for MySQL’s worldwide customer services organization, including technical support, training, consulting and certification programs. Sandberg holds a master of science in electrical engineering from Lunds Tekniska Hogskola in Lund, Sweden.
Greg Pavlik – VP Engineering
Greg has more than 15 years of experience in the distributed systems, middleware, and real-time analytics markets and brings proven software engineering management expertise to lead Hortonworks’ product development organization. Prior to joining Hortonworks, Greg spent nearly 10 years at Oracle, most recently as vice president of product development for Oracle’s market leading SOA and integration portfolio where he was responsible for building and managing the development organizations responsible for Oracle’s SOA Suite, governance offerings and Application Integration Architecture (AIA) products. Greg also served on Oracle’s External Research Board, Oracle’s Architecture Review Board, and led technical direction for the company’s Web services strategy and fusion middleware transaction processing infrastructure. Previously, Greg was the principal architect for the Java middleware division at Hewlett Packard and worked on Java Application Server middleware at Bluestone Software. Greg holds an MBA from the Wharton School of Business and a B.S. also from the University of Pennsylvania. Follow Greg on Twitter: @PavlikGreg.
Ari Zilka – CPO
Ari has more than 20 years of software development expertise and a deep understanding of open source, enterprise software, and the execution required to build successful products. Ari was previously founder and CTO at Terracotta. Previously, Ari was an Entrepreneur-in-Residence at Accel Partners. Before joining Accel, Ari was the Chief Architect at Walmart.com, where he led the innovation and development of the company’s new engineering initiatives. Prior to Walmart.com, Ari worked as a consultant at Sapient and at PriceWaterhouseCoopers. Ari holds a B.S. in Electrical Engineering Computer Science as well as in Mechanical Engineering from University of California, Berkeley. Follow Ari on Twitter: @ikarzali.