MariaDB Announces New Management Appointments

MariaDB plc (NYSE:MRDB) today announced Paul O’Brien has been appointed as the company’s new CEO and will serve as a member of the board of directors, effective May 26, 2023. Michael Howard, the company’s current CEO, will remain on the board of directors to provide strategic planning and oversight. The board has also appointed Tom Siegel as chief revenue officer (CRO) to lead the sales, consulting, support and training teams, and Jonah Harris as chief technology officer (CTO), effective June 5, 2023.

“Paul and Tom both have a track record of building successful SaaS companies as well as a broad understanding of how to drive growth and profitability at companies such as MariaDB,” said Alex Suh, chairman of the board, MariaDB plc. “Over the course of seven and a half years, Michael has expertly architected the transformation of MariaDB from an open-source offering to a cloud business that successfully competes with the hyperscalers. It’s thanks to his leadership and accomplishments that we enter the next growth phase, which is already reflected in our robust Annual Recurring Revenue (ARR) growth. With the additions of Paul and Tom to our already strong management team, we are confident we can move further and faster toward our ambitious goals.”

“MariaDB is headed in the right direction – look at the amazing talent we’ve attracted, the differentiation of our products – momentum is building and it’s the start of something spectacular,” said Howard. “For the next phase of growth, bringing in a fresh set of eyes is what’s needed to get to the next step. After many years of everyone’s hard work – from engineering to sales and marketing, and everyone in between, it’s all coming together. My heartfelt thanks to everyone.”

O’Brien has served as SVP, sales and field operations of the company since March 2023. Prior to joining MariaDB, he served as VP, Operations at NetApp, Inc., a storage and data management company and VP, Business Intelligence and Operations at Symantec Corporation, a security company. Prior to that, O’Brien held various management positions at EMC Corporation, a storage and data management company, and HP Inc. (then Hewlett-Packard Company), a technology company, and also served as a partner at Prism Venture Partners, a venture firm. In all these roles, O’Brien was responsible for successfully guiding companies in their evolution from on-prem deployments and perpetual license software to subscription and cloud-based models.