Datastax Appoints Dennis Wolf as Chief Financial Officer

SAN MATEO, CA--(Marketwired - Oct 23, 2013) - DataStax, the company that powers the online applications that transform business, today announced that Silicon Valley veteran Dennis Wolf will join the company as chief financial officer, where he will oversee all of the company's financial and operational functions. Wolf arrives at a time when privately held DataStax is experiencing more than 150 percent growth year-over-year, rapid international expansion, and a continuing momentum of enterprises migrating from relational database management systems (RDBMS) such as Oracle to DataStax's Apache Cassandra™ -- based NoSQL solution.

DataStax sells an enterprise-grade NoSQL database that seamlessly and securely integrates real-time data with Apache Cassandra, batch analytics, enterprise search, as well as visual monitoring and management. The integration allows enterprises to leverage their hot data in real-time, in the context of their critical business applications. DataStax powers applications for more than 300 customers, including eBay, Netflix, Adobe, Constant Contact and Ooyala, as well as 20 companies within the Fortune 100.

"Dennis Wolf brings much more to the table than financial experience," said Billy Bosworth, CEO of DataStax. "With his amazing track record at successful startups combined with his public company and public board experience, Dennis provides executive wisdom and strategic vision, which are vital to a fast-growing startup. Dennis has a proven ability to build a strong financial model for an open source software company as well as taking new and innovative technologies to a public offering, making him the ideal CFO for DataStax."

Wolf has held numerous executive positions with public and private companies including CFO, COO, and CEO. His most recent experience is as chief financial officer and executive vice president at Fusion-io, where he led the company to an IPO in 2011. Prior to that, he was the CFO at MySQL where his leadership proved invaluable to their growth and ultimate sale to Sun Microsystems in a transaction valued at $1 billion. Wolf held financial roles at Apple and Sun Microsystems earlier in his career, giving him a wide range of operational leadership over 30 years. He currently serves as a director and chair of the audit committee of Codexis Inc., and has been a director and chair of the audit committee for other publicly and privately held companies including Quantum Corporation, BigBand Networks, Inc., Registry Magic, Inc., Avanex Corporation, Komag, Inc., Exponential Interactive, and Vitria Technology, Inc.

"DataStax is growing at an incredible rate and solving problems that are far too complicated for relational databases like Oracle," said John Vrionis, Partner, Lightspeed Venture Partners, and DataStax founding investor. "To handle this growth, we needed a CFO with a unique blend of high growth experience combined with knowledge of the open source business model. With Dennis, that's exactly what we get."

"I am impressed at the innovation and capabilities being delivered by the DataStax team. It is clear that the NoSQL model is the future of database software and I am excited to be a part of this new wave of technology," said Wolf. "DataStax has a huge lineup of enterprise customers, a deep executive team with proven leadership, and unique, game-changing technology. All the pieces are in place to reshape the database market, and I am delighted to join DataStax at such an inspiring time."

Wolf holds a B.A. from the University of Colorado and an M.B.A. from the University of Denver.

About DataStax
DataStax powers the online applications that transform business for more than 300 customers, including startups and 20 of the Fortune 100. DataStax delivers a massively scalable, flexible and continuously available big data platform built on Apache Cassandra™. DataStax integrates enterprise-ready Cassandra, Apache Hadoop™ for analytics and Apache Solr™ for search across multi-datacenters and in the cloud.

Companies such as Adobe, Healthcare Anytime, eBay and Netflix rely on DataStax to transform their businesses. Based in San Mateo, Calif., DataStax is backed by industry-leading investors: Lightspeed Venture Partners, Crosslink Capital, Meritech Capital Partners, Scale Venture Partners, DFJ Growth and Next World Capital. For more information, visit DataStax or follow us @DataStax.