MapR probably isn’t the first vendor you think of when you hear “Hadoop” — and that’s just fine with the company’s President, Matt Mills.
Mills doesn't want MapR to get lumped in with Hortonworks and Cloudera.
“We’re on a mission to make sure we’re not grouped-in with the other two," he told CMSWire yesterday. "We’re selling a Converged Data Platform (CDP). It’s software. We’re a lot more like Splunk than Hortonworks.”
It's a message Mills wants the market to understand, and one of many reasons he just brought in David Cross as the company’s new CMO.
Cross, who has worked at companies like Coca-Cola, Procter & Gamble and Ventiv Technology, is regarded as an expert at branding. He will be responsible for getting the big data cruncher’s name out, making sure that its messaging and its website reflect the “incredible value" that Mills said its software provides and insuring that its products are more accessible.
“We’re going to become mainstream,” said Mills.
More C-Suite Shuffle
Jack Norris, who was MapR’s CMO, will now wear the hat of senior vice president of data and applications. His task will be driving the understanding and adoption of new applications enabled by data convergence.
“Srivas has other things he wants to do. He's a startup guy,” said Mills, noting that Srivas' most recent role might have taken him away from his true passion — building things.
MapR, with its recent patent for CDP, has “terrific, young talent” that is ready to step up and take it from here, Mills added.
She is joining MapR from Oracle where she led the North America big data and analytics alliances organization.
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Lake will be tasked with growing partner, global system integrator, ISV programs and relationships as well as embedding CDP with OEMs.
What’s This All About?
Does the fact that MapR is making so many significant management changes at once spell trouble?
“Just the opposite,” said Mills, “we’ve just had our best quarter ever. We’re well capitalized and on a path to growth.”
And an IPO? “Absolutely, as soon as market conditions are right,” he said.
Mills seemed sure that MapR has the right stuff. He rattled off the fundamentals as fast as a rapper. "Single global instance. Multi-tenancy. Real time reliability. Data Integrity. Speed. Both speed and data integrity are important,” he said.
Between now and MapR’s, yet to be determined IPO, the company has plenty to do. Market growth seems to be top on their list. Mills said he’s not worried about missing the moment to tell the company’s data story to Wall Street. “Fortune 1000 firms that are beginning their big data journeys know about us, they’ll experiment with other vendors, but as they’re ready to move into production, they’ll choose MapR,” he said.
Or another way to put it, according to Norris, “The more experience Enterprises have with Hadoop, the more likely they’ll choose MapR. We have the best data platform.”
A few years from now, we'll know if he's right.
