SUNNYVALE, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Hortonworks, a leading commercial vendor promoting the development and support of Apache Hadoop, today announced that Ari Zilka has joined the company as its chief products officer. With more than 20 years of software development expertise, Zilka brings a deep understanding of open source, enterprise software, and the execution required to build successful products.
As chief products officer, Zilka will be responsible for furthering product strategy and direction for the Hortonworks Data Platform that provides an open and stable foundation for enterprises and a growing ecosystem to build and deploy big data solutions. In addition, Zilka will lead the company’s product management function as well as its field and sales engineering teams.
“As a true innovator in the software industry, Ari’s track record of building new products and successfully bringing them to market makes him the perfect addition to our growing team,” said Rob Bearden, CEO of Hortonworks. “With Ari on board driving product management, Hortonworks will continue to expand our offerings to the Apache Hadoop community, helping to build a robust ecosystem.”
“Having spent a considerable amount of time in the big in-memory segment of the big data space, it is exciting to be a part of a company that is helping take the rapidly emerging Apache Hadoop technology to the enterprise market,” said Zilka. “I look forward to working with the Hortonworks team that contributed the majority of the code to Apache Hadoop to ensure that the open source project becomes the de facto platform for storing, managing and processing big data.”
Prior to joining Hortonworks, Zilka founded Terracotta, the company behind some of the most widely used software for application scalability, availability and performance, where he held the role of chief technology officer. Terracotta was acquired by Software AG in 2011. Prior to founding Terracotta in 2003, Zilka was the chief architect at Walmart.com, where he led the innovation and development of the company’s new engineering initiatives, including leading a team of core engineers focused on performance management and operations cost-saving measures. Prior to Walmart.com, Zilka worked as a consultant at Sapient and before that at PriceWaterhouseCoopers.
Zilka holds a B.S. in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science as well as in Mechanical Engineering from the University of California, Berkeley.
About Hortonworks
Hortonworks is the leading commercial vendor of Apache Hadoop, the preeminent open source platform for storing, managing, and analyzing large volumes of data. The Hortonworks Data Platform provides an open and stable foundation for enterprises and a growing ecosystem to build and deploy big data solutions. Together with the Apache community, Hortonworks is making Hadoop more robust and easier to install, manage, and use. Hortonworks provides unmatched technical support, training and certification programs for enterprises, systems integrators, and technology vendors. For more information, visit www.hortonworks.com.