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NoSQL startup MongoDB names BladeLogic founder as new CEO

Could an IPO be in the offing?

MongoDB has appointed venture capitalist and former entrepreneur Dev Ittycheria as its new chief executive, adding fuel to speculation that the NoSQL database firm may be planning to go public soon.

Ittycheria, who most recently served as managing director of Openview Venture Partners, replaces outgoing CEO Max Schireson, who took the corner office back when MongoDB was still called 10gen but is now stepping down after just 18 months in the role.

Schireson will retain a seat on the company's board, where he has been promoted to vice chairman beneath MongoDB cofounder Dwight Merriman.

Prior to wading into the VC waters, Ittycheria was the cofounder and CEO of data center automation software firm BladeLogic, which he took public in 2007 and then sold to BMC the following year for around $900m.

Bringing in a business-savvy outsider like Ittycheria to manage MongoDB would seem to suggest that the fast-growing database upstart may be planning a similar trajectory for itself, but Schireson was quick to downplay such thoughts.

"The last three years of growth have been spectacular," the former CEO said in a canned statement. "With Dev joining the team, I am personally excited to be able to focus on customers, partnerships and product strategy. Dev's experience and leadership will be a powerful addition to the company as we continue to grow."

So far, MongoDB's growth has come mainly from startups and web companies, although some enterprises have begun to take notice.

The company's flagship database product has become the most popular of the new crop of non-relational databases, beating out such competitors as Cassandra, CouchDB, HBase, Redis, and Riak in the latest rankings from DB-Engines.

MongoDB's most recent funding round gained it $150m in investment from the likes of Intel, Red Hat, and Salesforce.com, bringing its total valuation to $1.2bn – more than the $1bn that Sun Microsystems paid to acquire MySQL in 2008.

Its success has been such that last month it managed to lure Roger Bramford – a longtime Oracle vet who is credited with creating the company's Real Application Clusters (RAC) high-availability technology – to join MongoDB as a distinguished engineer in the company's senior development team.

Ittycheria will officially assume his new role as MongoDB's president and chief exec on September 3, 2014. ®

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