Cloudera opens EMEA headquarters in London's Tech City

In response to increasing enterprise demand for Apache Hadoop in the European, Middle East and African markets, Cloudera has announced the opening of its EMEA headquarters, located on Rivington Street, in the financial district of London and at the heart of London's Tech City in Shoreditch. The company's newly appointed vice president of EMEA Ross Hinchcliffe will lead the new division. Prior to Cloudera, Hinchcliffe led European operations for Tealeaf, a mobile customer experience software company acquired by IBM in May 2012. Cloudera's new offices will support its expansion into key European markets, providing on-the-ground resources to deliver technical support, training and solution development for its enterprise customers and partners in the EMEA region.

  • Tuesday, 23rd April 2013 Posted 11 years ago in by Phil Alsop

As Hadoop is a great open-source software framework that supports data-intensive distributed applications its demand by enterprises is rapidly increasing in Europe. Alys Woodward, Research Director, European Business Analytics, at IDC, commented on the announcement, "Our 2013 survey results reveal that 40% of European organisations intend to considerably increase their use of Big Data over the next twelve months." (Source: "Big Data in Europe in 2013: The Cloud and Hadoop take Hold," IDC, April 2013).

"Demand for Hadoop in the European market is exploding, providing fertile ground from which to grow our business and support the proliferation of Apache Hadoop in enterprises across the region," said Mike Olson, CEO at Cloudera. "We are excited to open our EMEA headquarters in the United Kingdom and exceedingly proud to be executing this important phase in our go-to-market strategy. By establishing a brick-and-mortar presence, we will now be better equipped to serve and support our enterprise customers and more deeply collaborate with our valued partners."

Strong Market Momentum in Europe and Beyond
Cloudera's decision to establish operations in Europe was based on increasing global demand for and adoption of its category leading Apache Hadoop-based software, training and support services. Over the past year, the company has seen dramatically increased momentum in interest and adoption from data-driven enterprises across Europe and global enterprise customers with broad operational footprints in the region, including BlackBerry, CBS Interactive, eBay, Expedia, Experian, JP Morgan Chase, King.com, Monsanto, Morgan Stanley, and Nokia.

"As a Cloudera customer we welcome the news of an office opening in London," said Mats Olov Ericksson, director of data warehousing at King.com. "King.com uses Cloudera Enterprise to monitor our Hadoop cluster, in turn getting greater value from the massive amounts of data and information we generate from gamers across multiple platforms. As we continue to expand, we will continue to work closely with Cloudera's technology to help us turn valuable data insight into competitive advantage."

Key Alliances with Premier European Solution Providers
Through its Cloudera Connect Partner Program, the big data industry's most expansive and diverse ecosystem of solution providers, resellers and managed service providers, Cloudera has already attracted more than 80 members from 30+ countries across EMEA.

The company has also inked strategic partnership agreements with key European solution providers, most recently, T-Systems, with whom it will deliver turnkey Analytics-as-a-Service solutions on Cloudera's Platform for Big Data, Cloudera Enterprise.

"Our customers don't want to have to worry about the hardware and software for big data. They don't want technology, just a reliable service. We can offer precisely this -- which is what makes our new offer with Cloudera so special," says Christian Wirth, vice president, BI & Big Data at T-Systems.

Educating the Next Generation of European Data Professionals
Cloudera University, the company's educational division, has also seen strong momentum in the region, with more than 40 classes scheduled in Europe, including local language sessions in London, Paris, Berlin, Munich, Madrid, Amsterdam, Milan, Krakow, Warsaw, and Istanbul. In April, Cloudera will host its first two webinars catering to the European audience on the topics of Hadoop Developer training and Data Science training. Since its inception, Cloudera University has trained more than 15,000 people worldwide and delivered more than 100 training sessions in Europe.

London's Tech City: A Tech-Rich Community to Anchor Cloudera's EMEA Operations
Cloudera joins more than 1,300 high technology companies in calling London's "Silicon Roundabout" home. Tech City houses some of the world's foremost high technology innovators, including Google, Intel and Cisco, and offers a rich talent pool of engineering and data professionals, making it a prime setting in which to base Cloudera's European operations.

"Headquartering Cloudera's EMEA operations in London, at the heart of its technology cluster, will enable us to develop closer ties with key customer and partner organizations, and gives us access to a diverse and highly skilled pool of database architects and data scientists," said Ross Hinchcliffe, vice president of EMEA at Cloudera. "I am excited to be supporting the company at this critical growth phase and look forward to supporting its continued growth and vitality in the region."

Benjamin Southworth, Deputy CEO of Tech City Investment Organisation, said: "Cloudera's decision to open its European HQ in London is another brilliant example of how the UK's package of tax incentives, tech-driven policies, infrastructure and home grown talent is proving to be so successful in attracting the most world's most promising tech companies. Cloudera will be a great addition to the 1,300 companies that already call Tech City home."