Big Data Career Notes (June 2016)

In this monthly feature, we’ll keep you up-to-date on the latest career developments for individuals in the big data community. Whether it’s a promotion, new company hire, or even an accolade, we’ve got the details. Check in each month for an updated list and you may even come across someone you know, or better yet, yourself!

Steve Smith

Steve Smith, CEO and President of Equinix, has joined NetApp’s board of directors. Prior to joining Equinix in 2007, Smith was the senior vice president of HP Services at Hewlett-Packard Company.

“Steve’s 25 years of broad experience and work as an active CEO will add a valuable perspective to our board of directors,” said George Kurian, CEO, NetApp. “He has a wealth of deep technology expertise and understanding of how IT environments are evolving. We look forward to benefiting from his insight.”

Patrick Ball

Patrick Ball has joined MemSQL as its new vice president of worldwide sales. He previously served as the VP of sales West for Cloudera and before that held a number of different sales leadership positions at enterprise software companies.

“With over 20 years of enterprise software sales experience, I am pleased to welcome Patrick to the MemSQL family,” said Eric Frenkiel, CEO and co-founder, MemSQL. “Patrick’s stellar big data expertise and sales leadership come at the perfect time as we accelerate the pace of innovation and growth for MemSQL, extending our leadership in the rapidly expanding market for real-time database technology. Having talented executives like Patrick join MemSQL is a testament to what we have accomplished to date, and the opportunities that lie ahead.”

Marge Breya 

DataRPM has appointed Marge Breya to its board of directors. Breya currently serves as CMO at Ionic Security and is responsible for global market strategies. Some of her past positions includes chief marketing officer at Informatica, senior vice president of marketing at HP, and executive vice president and general manager at SAP.

“I’m thrilled to join DataRPM at this exciting stage of the company’s growth. We are now in an era where speed, scale, agility and automation are indispensable for innovative companies of all sizes. The next generation of insights cannot and will not be scaled by humans. I firmly believe that the machine-first approach that DataRPM has taken will give forward-thinking enterprises a real edge,” stated Breya.

Prakash Hariharan

Prakash Hariharan has been appointed CEO of AnalytixInsight. He is also chairman of the board and was formerly one of Canada’s leading portfolio managers when he worked at Front Street Capital.

“We are actively preparing the Company for growth,” said Hariharan. “Our big data platform is a powerful analytics engine capable of 100 billion computations daily. We will continue to expand our stock analysis offerings while we explore new industry verticals such as healthcare and gaming which can benefit from our algorithmically generated narrative capabilities.”

Mohan Gyani 

Argyle Data announced that Mohan Gyani has joined its board of directors. Gyani was formerly the president and CEO of AT&T Wireless Mobility Services. He also spent time at AirTouch Communications as CFO and executive vice president.

“I see enormous potential for businesses who are able to anticipate the impact of technology and market shifts and adapt to deliver solutions that meet fundamental changes,” said Gyani. “Argyle Data is trail-blazing a new generation of Hadoop-based machine learning applications that for the first time are meeting the needs of mobile communications providers for usable big data analytics to solve business challenges. I look forward to working with the board and management team to make this vision a reality.”

John Leon and Paul Sanford

ExtraHop has hired both John Leon and Paul Sanford. Leon takes over as vice president of business development and Sanford will lead the product management team as its senior director.

Leon joins ExtraHop from Puppet Labs where he was the director of business development and alliances. He has also spent time at VMware, Intel, and HP.

“I’ve worked with and for many disruptive companies, and I know a game-changing product when I see it,” said Leon. “For customers, the ExtraHop platform offers an unprecedented degree of visibility and control. For alliance partners it means seamless deployment and ongoing customer success. I look forward to deepening relationships with our existing technology partners and forging new ones that accelerate IT innovation.”

Prior to joining Extrahop, Sanford was a founding member of the Seattle engineering campus of Splunk where he built the product management team. He also worked at Microsoft as a senior product manager.

“ExtraHop is championing wire data analytics to solve many of the issues IT organizations experience daily with expediency and ease,” said Sanford. “The company’s technology fundamentally changes how businesses approach IT, and I’m looking forward to furthering our customers’ successes.”

Do you know someone that should be included in next month’s list? If so, send us an email at [email protected]. We look forward to hearing from you.