Cloudera cofounder Mike Olson steps down as CEO, former ArcSight head steps up

“Big data” startup Cloudera has announced a shakeup of its executive team, with cofounder Mike Olson stepping down as CEO and former ArcSight CEO Tom Reilly stepping in to take his place.

Olson will stay on as chairman and chief strategy officer. Olson welcomed Reilly into his old job with this canned statement:

With over 30 years of enterprise software experience, I am pleased to welcome Tom to the Cloudera family. 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.

Cloudera is a well-known player in big data, and it has raised a staggering $140 million in venture capital to date. It is best known for selling a version of Apache Hadoop that is packed with more features and support.

Now the company’s fate will line up with Reilly, who has a lot experience but a lot of work ahead of him. Cloudera’s announcement hints that Reilly will help position the company for its next steps, whether that be an IPO or an acquisition. Cloudera writes (emphasis ours):

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.