News

Former Microsoft Exec Bob Muglia Takes CEO Post at DW Startup

• By Gladys Rama
• June 26, 2014

Bob Muglia, the former head of Microsoft's Server and Tools business, is now the CEO of San Mateo, Calif.-based Snowflake Computing.

Muglia logged 23 years with Microsoft before leaving the company in 2011 and becoming a vice president at Juniper Networks. He stepped down from that position in late December.

Re/code's Ina Fried reported Muglia's new role on Thursday. Snowflake Computing is a 2-year-old startup with 35 employees, Fried noted. The company is focused on developing data warehouse (DW) solutions that are specifically suited for cloud computing. In his interview with Fried, Muglia indicated that Snowflake is working with early beta testers on those solutions, but the company has yet to publicize its product plans.

In a letter posted on Snowflake's Web site, Muglia did paint a broad picture of the company's goals, chief among them being the creation of a "database that reimagines data warehousing as a cloud service."

According to Muglia, the proliferation of cloud and mobility technologies has meant that organizations need more effective ways to analyze large amounts of business data, particular data generated in the cloud. Simply hosting an on-premise data warehouse in the cloud is not enough, he said.

"[T]hese systems were not designed for the distributed cloud and that limits their usefulness. On the other hand, 'Big Data' solutions using tools like Hadoop are useful for the problems they were designed for -- but they aren't designed for data warehousing. Bolting SQL onto Hadoop is not the answer," Muglia wrote. "The ultimate opportunity to gain business insight into modern applications is to build a platform service that was designed from the start to bring data warehousing, the cloud, and semi-structured data together. This is what we're creating at Snowflake Computing."

Muglia did not give many more details about the "Snowflake cloud service," though he added that it will work for both small and large enterprises.