That struck me as interesting and I think it shows real problems of the merger. The merger made it difficult for customers to see the value of their contracts. Cloudera’s output really stopped and customers could see that. Why should they continue to pay for something we may not get? Customers will give you some slack, but when you’re writing million dollar checks, that patience wears and they want results. In my company, I have advised my clients to not believe the roadmaps they were given or make plans based on the roadmap.

What Can Be Done?

As I said, I came to praise Cloudera not to bury it. I think that Cloudera – with the right direction and leadership – could be fixed. As a former Clouderan, that really makes me sad to have to say.

People

Cloudera lost its way on the people. When I left I had a half-hearted please stay. I thought that was just my experience or it was me personally. Then I started talking to other people who left and I asked them about their experience leaving. It was all similar. Their management reactions ranged from arrogantly saying don’t let the door hit you to half-hearted please stay.

It was after these conversations that I realized Cloudera had really lost its way. These weren’t your average people. These were some of the more public faces of Cloudera – often published authors. These people went on to found new companies that are doing well. The new ideas that were the basis of their new companies were often rejected by Cloudera’s management. Cloudera really lost out by not incentivizing people to stay.

Cloudera needs to get the original band back together. Now, that’s going to have to happen with acquisitions and acquihires. In other words, it’s more expensive that it would have been to keep them originally.

This would include removing much of Cloudera’s management. I’m sure many of the problems are due to politics, infighting, and favoritism. Some of these managers are gone, but some are still there. There really needs to be some house cleaning.

There is a level of arrogance at Cloudera. Some of this arrogance is just the Silicon Valley arrogance (I work/worked at Company X therefore I’m smarter/better/faster than you) that you have to deal with and some were born that way. You have some really smart people and some who’ve done some quantifiably great things. Cloudera was this weird juxtaposition of egos – some founded and unfounded. Some of the healthiest egos had the lowest appreciable value creation and that clashed with the people actually creating value at Cloudera. Cloudera lost some good people who tired of the ego clashes.

Technology

Cloudera’s new technologies really didn’t have a market fit or were half-assed approximations of another startup’s technology. It seemed like Cloudera’s salespeople would say they’re losing sales to technology X. Cloudera would then cobble together some open source and position itself against technology X.

There really wasn’t much in the way of technical leadership coming from Cloudera. At one time Cloudera was really leading.

I remember the first time I started asking Cloudera about Kafka. I saw the market need and desire for Kafka early on. I’ll never forget the conversations I had with Clouderans about Kafka. They dismissed it out of hand at a time when it was really taking off. Overall, Cloudera is really missing out on the technical vision of real-time and messaging systems.

If I were Cloudera, I’d be reevaluating the technical stack I’m pushing and see the significantly better technologies out there. These technologies are not the ones Cloudera is currently pushing. Cloudera could establish itself as a leader again. It would take some acquisitions too.

Positioning

I’ll apologize ahead of time to whoever created this “Modern Data Warehouse” marketing slogan, but I don’t think it was a single person. I’m guessing this was the product of a committee.

The “Modern Data Warehouse” positioning is terrible and needs to be removed 1984-style. It’s like saying, “I’ve given up on being interesting or new. I’m going to wear sweat pants from now on – just not ones with holes in them”. A big part of the low value we generate in big data is because of data warehousing and its mindset.

The Edge-to-Edge AI positioning is much better. However, it’s really only resonates with IoT companies who actually have or need an edge. The majority of Cloudera’s customer aren’t doing edge now or in the future.

Evangelism

Cloudera never evangelized its products well to developers. Cloudera did inherit some evangelists during the Hortonworks merger.

A quick story about this. I tried to become Cloudera’s first developer advocate before I left. I ended up just leaving. In the fun of trying to play the politics of the job move, I realized Cloudera’s focus wasn’t on developer success. It was on egos and fiefdoms.

Cloudera mostly focused on the evangelization to management, but never focused on the evangelization to developers. I saw that missing piece and tried to fill it. It seems like Cloudera just assumed that developers would be pushed to the technologies by management. I think part of Confluent’s success was realizing the push had to be from both sides. Developer advocates pushing the frontline developers and management hearing about it from other sources.

Getting Back

You could summarize this post by saying if Cloudera wants to survive, it needs to get back to what made early Cloudera so good. This was the right mix of leadership, people, and technology. It’s missing now and I’m hoping they can get their groove back.

A big thanks to the former Clouderans and others who read this and gave feedback.