MongoDB Picks New CEO

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MongoDB announced Tuesday that BMC veteran Dev Ittycheria will take over leadership of the company from current CEO Max Schireson, who will become vice chairman.

MongoDB has been highly successful during Schireson's three-and-a-half year tenure, establishing itself as the leading NoSQL database vendor and growing from 20 to 400 employees. But Schireson says MongoDB needs a different leader to bring the company to the next level.

"Growing the company from 400 to 4,000 employees, over whatever period of time, will involve a different level of operational complexity... Dev has experience managing larger organizations," said Schireson in a phone interview with InformationWeek.

[Want more on up-and-coming vendors? Read Why NoSQL Databases Are Gaining Fans.]

Ittycheria co-founded enterprise software company BladeLogic in 2001 and served as CEO until he took the company public in 2007 and then sold it to BMC Software for approximately $900 million in 2008. After the acquisition, Ittycheria became president of BMC's Enterprise Service Management business, a unit with $1.4 billion in annual revenue and more than 4,000 employees.

MongoDB landed a massive $150 million venture capital round last fall. The next logical step for the company (and for rivals, including Basho, Couchbase, and Datastax) is either an initial public offering or acquisition by another company.

"I'm thrilled by the opportunity to help create the next great database company," said Ittycheria in a statement.

Schireson says he will focus on customers, partnerships, and product strategy as vice chairman, serving alongside MongoDB chairman and co-founder Dwight Merriman, whom Schireson succeeded as CEO. Schireson said he sought the change after logging more than 300,000 miles of air travel over the last year while living in Palo Alto, Calif., and leading a company headquartered in New York.

In a blog post about the CEO shift, Schireson noted that he has 9-, 12-, and 14-year-old children at home and that his wife is a busy doctor and professor at Stanford University.

"As a male CEO, I have been asked what kind of car I drive and what type of music I like, but never how I balance the demands of being both a dad and a CEO," wrote Schireson, noting that his wife is often asked that question. "A few months ago, I decided the only way to balance was by stepping back from my job."

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