Open source database vendor Yugabyte has expanded its global footprint with the opening of new business operations in the EMEA and APAC regions.
This coincides with the appointment of Martin Gaffney as vice president for EMEA to lead efforts in the region, including building a channel.
Yugabyte has opened a European headquarters in Surrey, UK and has “imminent plans” to expand into the DACH region and Benelux, with an initial focus on Germany and The Netherlands to serve existing and new customers across those regions.
There is an EMEA-wide channel plan, recruiting software solution partners in the UK and the DACH region to begin with. “Yugabyte is looking to set up a channel across the region, involving partners that are looking for a cloud agnostic database,” said the Sunnyvale, California-headquartered firm.
Yugabyte partners already include Obsidian in South Africa and SoftTech in Turkey. Globally, Infosys is a partner and Wipro is a partner and investor in the vendor.
The company is also expanding its engineering team into Russia.
Yugabyte recently closed a $48m funding round led by Lightspeed Venture Partners, with additional participation by Greenspring Associates, Dell Technologies Capital, Wipro Ventures and 8VC. This followed a $30m capital raise announced in 2020. Total funding now stands at $103m.
Karthik Ranganathan, CTO for Yugabyte, said: “We have focused our expansion in the regions with the highest customer demand and the best talent. We’re building the team in EMEA under Martin’s leadership to help us achieve our mission of becoming the default database for cloud native applications in a multi-cloud world.”
Gaffney added: “I am joining the leadership team to support the international growth of the company and am confident that explosive growth for Yugabyte is a case of when, not if.”
Most recently, Gaffney was regional sales director for EMEA at H2O.ai, and he has also previously held positions at the likes of Sequent Computer Systems, Tivoli Systems, Netezza Corporation and Volantis Systems.
David Walker has joined him as Yugabyte's EMEA technical director.
