Databricks Announces Changes in Leadership Team to Align With Rapid Growth

SAN FRANCISCO, CA--(Marketwired - Jan 11, 2016) - Databricks, the company founded by the creators of Apache Spark, today announced a change in leadership to accommodate its rapid growth and 2016 business objectives. 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."

Databricks also announced today that Ron Gabrisko has joined the executive team as Senior Vice President of Worldwide Sales. Gabrisko brings more than 15 years of experience in global software sales and will be responsible for helping Databricks continue to build and meet the growing enterprise demands for its agile data platform.

Gabrisko joins Databricks as a member of the strong leadership team, including Matei Zaharia, Co-founder and CTO, Kavitha Mariappan, Vice President of Marketing, Arsalan Tavakoli-Shiraji, Vice President of Customer Engagement and Business Development, Andy Konwinski, Vice President of Education, and Co-founder Reynold Xin. More information on the company's leadership team can be found here.

As the Databricks platform achieves rapid enterprise adoption, an experienced leadership team is imperative to manage the demand across a multitude of channels. Since announcing their platform general availability in June 2015, Databricks has been adopted by over 200 paying customers, making it the Spark platform with the largest number of customers among any enterprise vendor. The company has also trained over 20,000 Spark developers in 2015, and continues to be the largest contributor to the Apache Spark project, with 10 times more code contributions than any other company.

For more information on Databricks' growth and plans for 2016, please read here.

About Databricks:

Databricks' vision is to make big data simple for the enterprise. The company was founded by the team that created and continues to drive Apache Spark, a powerful open source data processing engine built for sophisticated analytics, ease of use, and speed. Databricks is the largest contributor to the open source Spark project providing 10x more code than any other company. The company has also trained over 20,000 users on Apache Spark, and has the largest number of customers deploying Spark to date. Databricks is venture-backed by Andreessen Horowitz and NEA. For more information, contact info@databricks.com.