It's with mixed emotions that after 5 years -- a very long time in this business -- I am leaving GigaSpaces. I joined GigaSpaces in the beginning of 2004 when the market was still recovering from the previous bubble burst, and it has been quite a ride ever since. We've experienced tremendous growth in revenues, intense competition, a revolutionary technology and a top-notch team at all levels. I still remain with the strong belief that GigaSpaces has an amazing product that is unparalleled in its scalability, performance and reliability, and that is a natural fit to where the world of IT is going.
At GigaSpaces, I've had the opportunity to play a variety of executive business roles, including -- at various points in time -- running sales, business development and marketing. My last role was to create and manage GigaSpaces's cloud computing initiative, which in a very short time put the company as a leader in the space (see
here and
here, for example) - and allowed me to develop my own "personal brand" through my blog, many customer interactions, press interviews and conference speaking.
Like all start-ups, we've had ups and downs at GigaSpaces, but overall I am extremely proud of our many accomplishments, and am particularly happy that I've made many new friends, people I admire professionally and just enjoy hanging out with including Yaron Benvenisti,
Nati Shalom,
Guy Nirpaz and many others. I wish them all great success. [As full disclosure, I should mention that I have an equity stake in GigaSpaces and will continue advising them on some of the cloud computing strategy and other marketing issues for a while.]
The cloud computing area is extremely hot right now, but as I said in How the Recession Saved Cloud Computing, it's hot in a healthy, not a bubbly, kind of way. I have spent a lot of time lately with start-ups, VCs and large vendors, as well as with all shapes and sizes of potential cloud customers, and there are very exciting opportunities on almost all fronts.
So I am now looking at a number of directions, which include CEO of existing start-ups (including non-cloud specific software companies), an executive role at the cloud-related business units of very large vendors, an EIR at a couple of Sand Hill Road firms and some other interesting opportunities. Despite the economy, cloud computing is doing well. VCs are investing (not like crazy, but at a healthy rate), big companies are hiring (e.g., from what I hear, while Yahoo laid off 6500 people overall, it is hiring 20 people for its cloud business), and existing quality companies in the cloud space are increasing adoption and revenues.
While I explore the various opportunities, I am also helping companies big and small with various ad hoc projects around cloud. These include working on go-to-market strategies for entering the cloud space (either with existing or new products), as well as doing assessments of whether it makes sense operationally to move applications running in traditional data centers or dedicated hosting services to infrastructure-as-a-service models. In fact, I am working on a pretty interesting ROI model for assessing the potential economic benefits (or lack thereof) of migrating to a cloud environment, and I hope to publish it soon.
What I like about these projects, and the search for a new opportunity, is that it is broadening my view of what's going on and exposing me to many new interesting ideas.
I also hope to step up some of my blogging and
podcasting activities, including a much more active role on
GigaOm, an activity that I will describe in more detail shortly.
So with that, onward and upward!
