BOSTON, MA--(Marketwire - Feb 27, 2012) - Cloudant, the data layer as a service company, today announced it has appointed Andy Palmer to its Board of Directors, effective immediately. An experienced entrepreneur and corporate executive with more than two decades of experience, Palmer will help shape and accelerate the growth of Cloudant.

Palmer was co-founder and founding CEO of Vertica Systems (acquired by HP). With a proven track record of seven successful startups including two IPOs in the past 20 years, Palmer has specialized in accelerating the foundation and growth of early-stage companies that span enterprise software, the Internet, ecommerce, and biotech. Prior to Vertica, Palmer was the senior vice president of operations and CIO for Infinity Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ: [ INFI ]) and has held executive positions at Bowstreet (acquired by IBM), pcOrder.com and Trilogy.

"Cloudant was founded on a brilliant premise: the data layer is something you should grow into, not out of," said Palmer. "The unique technology behind the Cloudant Data Layer makes discontinuous and expensive data management infrastructure upgrades a thing of the past. But Cloudant goes beyond just continuous scaling. With Cloudant it is much easier for developers to add innovative analytics, text search, off-line computing, geo-location and other features to their web and mobile apps. I'm psyched to join the Cloudant team as it shapes the future of web and mobile application development."

Palmer has recently served as a founding board member for several other cloud and big data startups, including CloudSwitch (acquired by Verizon), Goby (acquired by Telenav), Recorded Future, VoltDB and Paradigm4.

"Andy is a visionary technology leader with a brilliant entrepreneurial track record," said Derek Schoettle, CEO of Cloudant. "Andy's experience growing early stage companies and in Big Data will be invaluable in helping to shape Cloudant's ongoing strategic and operational focus."

The Cloudant Data Layer

Cloudant is a scalable data layer (as a service) for big data applications. Built on the Apache CouchDB document database, JSON, and MapReduce, it lets developers focus on new features instead of the drudgery of growing or migrating databases. The Cloudant Data Layer is already big. It collects, stores, analyzes and distributes application data across a global network of secure, high-performance data centers, delivering low-latency, non-stop data access to users no matter where they're located. Cloudant is available as a single- or multi-tenant service.

Cloudant is free to start. To sign up for Cloudant, or for more information, please visit [ www.cloudant.com ].

About Cloudant, Inc.

Cloudant, the company that builds and manages The Cloudant Data Layer, was founded in Cambridge, MA in 2008 by three MIT Physicists. Frustrated by the available tools for managing and analyzing Big Data in their research, the founders set out to build a distributed, fault-tolerant, globally scalable data layer for applications, a platform that would free developers to focus on their applications knowing that they would never outgrow their data layer. Cloudant's service helps power thousands of applications in organizations of all shapes and sizes, from lone developers to the Fortune 100. The Cloudant team is composed of experts in distributed systems, database technology, web services, and Big Data analysis. It proudly counts Avalon Ventures and Y Combinator among its investors. For more information about the company, The Data Layer, or to sign up for Cloudant's managed service, visit [ http://cloudant.com ].

Cloudant disclaims any proprietary interest in the marks and names of others.