Elastic announced the promotion of Ashutosh (Ash) Kulkarni to CEO and his nomination to the Board of Directors.
Kulkarni will succeed Founder and CEO Shay Banon, who reassumes the role of CTO, and will continue to serve on the Board of Directors.
Banon, who served as CTO prior to being named CEO five years ago, stepped down from his role as Chairman of the Board. Chetan Puttagunta, currently Lead Independent Director, has been appointed Chairman.
"... I've seen him in action for the past year and I know that his focused and empathetic leadership style combined with his executional and operational excellence will enable him to successfully lead Elastic," said Shay Banon, CTO, Elastic. "Elastic is my life's work, and in my role as CTO, I'll be laser-focused on innovation and product, and people and culture - where my greatest passions lie, while Ash leads Elastic to realize its full potential. Our continued partnership will bring our employees, customers, and community the best of both worlds."
"Ash's success driving the growth of Elastic's cloud business and building strong relationships across the entire Elastic customer base made his promotion to CEO a natural choice for the Board," said Chetan Puttagunta, Chairman and Lead Independent Director, Elastic. "The Board unanimously chose Ash after seeing the exceptional product innovations and customer growth he delivered over the past year."
Since joining Elastic as Chief Product Officer in January 2021, Kulkarni has been the architect of Elastic's growing focus on its Cloud business, and of the strategy behind its solutions in the areas of Observability, Security, and Enterprise Search. He has brought a renewed emphasis on user experience and customer success, especially with a view to helping drive frictionless growth in the cloud.
Prior to Elastic, Kulkarni held senior product leadership and management roles at McAfee, Akamai, Informatica, and Sun Microsystems.
"... We have a tremendous opportunity ahead of us as the markets we operate in continue to grow, and as the volume and complexity of data continues to explode. From Observability and Security to Enterprise Search, Elastic is helping thousands of customers use the power of search to extract value from their data in more intuitive ways than ever before. And Elastic Cloud is helping them do this with greater scale, speed, and relevance than ever before." said Ashutosh Kulkarni, CEO, Elastic.
Separately, Paul Appleby, has stepped down from his role as president, worldwide field operations, and will be leaving Elastic. "I want to thank Shay for the tremendous opportunity to be a part of Elastic's exceptional growth and extend my warm congratulations to Ash on his promotion to CEO," said Paul Appleby. "I am proud of the team we have built, and am confident that they will help Elastic continue its rapid march forward. I am committed to a successful transition."
Kulkarni added, "We have a strong team, and I have confidence in our chief sales officer, Michael Cremen, as well as in our product leadership, and know that we will continue executing to our highest standards even as we start a search for a chief product officer to take over my prior day-to-day responsibilities."
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