Cloudera appoints Tom Reilly as CEO and Mike Olson as Chief Strategy Officer and chairman of the board

Leading Hadoop vendor poised for next stage of growth.

  • Thursday, 20th June 2013 Posted 11 years ago in by Phil Alsop

Cloudera has announced the appointments of Tom Reilly as chief executive officer (CEO) and Mike Olson as chief strategy officer (CSO) and chairman of the Board of Directors. Both executives will take up their new roles effective July 8th, 2013.


“With over 30 years of enterprise software experience, I am pleased to welcome Tom to the Cloudera family,” said Mike Olson, chief strategy officer, Cloudera. “We have long set the pace for the commercial adoption of Hadoop and with Tom’s leadership and focus Cloudera will accelerate the pace of innovation, continue to deliver growth and extend our market leadership. Today’s announcement reinforces Cloudera’s commitment and investment in the Hadoop open source community and the continued success of open source initiatives.”


The appointments capitalize on Cloudera’s existing market leadership. By adding Reilly to the management team, a seasoned industry veteran who brings a strong track record for leading high-growth enterprise organizations, Cloudera solidifies its position as the major software provider for big data in modern data centers. Mike Olson, a proven leader, visionary and innovator who has since its inception successfully lead the preeminent Hadoop vendor and helped create the existing Hadoop market becomes the CSO to ensure that Cloudera retains and extends its lead.


In Olson’s new role, he will focus on Cloudera’s market strategy, open source leadership, engineering alignment and direct engagement with customers to ensure that Cloudera continues to deliver leading Hadoop solutions to market.


“I am extremely excited to join an organization that is transforming an industry and enabling a new class of analytic applications that were previously unaffordable or unattainable with legacy approaches,” said Tom Reilly, chief executive officer, Cloudera. “As the addressable Hadoop market continues to grow and Cloudera positions itself to lead that market with its world-class product suite, I look forward to ensuring solid execution and continued high growth.”


Reilly joins Cloudera from HP, the world’s largest technology company, where he served as the vice president and general manager of enterprise security. Prior to HP, Reilly served as CEO of enterprise security company ArcSight, an early innovator in SIEM technology. Under Reilly’s leadership ArcSight became the market-leading platform for enterprise security intelligence adopted by the largest public and private organizations globally. He led ArcSight through a successful initial public offering and subsequent sale to HP in 2010.


He previously served as vice president of business information services for IBM, following the acquisition of master data management company, Trigo Technologies Inc., where he had served as CEO.


Reilly currently serves as a Board Member for Jive Software, privately held Ombud Inc., ThreatStream Inc. and will also join the Cloudera Board of Directors. He received his Bachelor of Science degree in Mechanical Engineering from the University of California, Berkeley.