Cloudant, leading architects & operators of the BigCouch data management network, announced that it has named Derek Schoettle as the company’s new chief executive officer. Schoettle is a veteran software and internet industry executive who was most recently a VP Sales at analytic database leader, Vertica Systems, Inc., targeting telecommunications and media companies. He joins Cloudant to lead the growth of the CouchDB-focused company, expanding its base of 100 customers and developing additional go-to-market channels.
“Derek brings proven business leadership to Cloudant and a strong track record of taking businesses to the next level,” said Rich Levandov, managing director at Avalon Ventures. “Cloudant enjoys a strong engineering culture and has a loyal customer following, and we’re confident Derek’ will build on both of those. We are delighted to welcome him to the team.”
Shoettle has over 15 years of executive experience, and his background has focused on moving new and disruptive technologies to commercial success. Previously, as a VP Sales at Vertica, Schoettle expanded the company’s customer list with Verizon, Comcast, AT&T, Sprint, AOL and scores of others. In 2011, Hewlett Packard acquired Vertica. Previously, he was VP Sales & Business development of Intellireach, an early stage email software company and saw it through acquisitions with Infocrossing and WIPRO. Shoettle is also well known in Boston tech circles as an angel investor and advisor.
Cloudant co-founder Alan Hoffman said, “Derek has been extremely successful building commercial brands out of leading-edge technologies. Derek has been a close advisor to Cloudant as we have moved our product into new markets, and it’s great to be bringing that experience into the company. “
The Cloudant founders are leaders in managing and analyzing massive amounts of complex, computational data. A recognized innovator in developing ‘big data’ applications, Cloudant created the BigCouch open source software to extend the functionality of Apache CouchDB. Cloudant founders were members of the renowned Large Hadron Collider project at CERN, where they worked with multi-petabyte data sets for high-energy particle physics research. Collectively frustrated with available tools to manage and analyze massive data sets, Cloudant was born out of the famed Silicon Valley startup incubator Y Combinator in 2008.