Cloudera Names Robert Bearden As President And Chief Executive Officer

By Amit Chowdhry • Jan 14, 2020
  • Enterprise data cloud company Cloudera recently announced the appointment of Robert Bearden as President and Chief Executive Officer

Enterprise data cloud company Cloudera recently announced the appointment of Robert Bearden as President and Chief Executive Officer. Bearden is an experienced enterprise software executive and he is known as the co-founder and former CEO of Hortonworks — which is a publicly-traded open-source company that merged with Cloudera in 2019.

“Rob has been a valuable resource for me and the company as we refined our post-merger strategy and positioned the company for the hybrid and multi-cloud opportunity in the enterprise,” said Martin Cole, chairman of the board of directors and interim CEO of Cloudera. “His extensive industry knowledge, unique customer insights and highly relevant CEO experience make Rob the natural choice to lead Cloudera into the future.”

Bearden also served as President and COO of SpringSource and worked as an Entrepreneur in Residence at Benchmark Capital. Plus Bearden also served as COO of JBoss until it was acquired by Red Hat in 2006.

“I am excited to become Cloudera’s CEO and to help lead its next phase of growth as the enterprise data cloud company,” added Bearden. “As a board member, I’ve been engaged with the leadership team on the company’s vision and strategy. I am fully committed to that strategy and confident our team will continue to execute on our growth initiatives. There is a large market for enterprise solutions that manage the complete data lifecycle across any cloud or data center. The new Cloudera Data Platform will enable us to capture more of this high-growth opportunity.”

Martin Cole is going to be retiring and current board member Nick Graziano will assume the duties of chairman of the board of directors. And Kim Hammonds will also be leaving the board.

Graziano has been Portfolio Manager of Icahn Capital LP since February 2018. And he was previously the Founding Partner and Chief Investment Officer of Venetus Partners LP. Currently, Graziano serves on the boards of directors of Conduent Incorporated, Herbalife Nutrition Ltd., Herc Holdings Inc. and Xerox Corporation.

“On behalf of the board of directors, we are grateful to Marty Cole and Kim Hammonds for their many years of service as board members,” stated Graziano. “In addition, we thank Marty for his stewardship of Cloudera as interim CEO while we identified the company’s next leader. I am looking forward to working with Rob, fellow board members and Cloudera management to drive increasing enterprise value.”