Former Microsoft, Juniper Exec Bob Muglia Joins Big Data Startup As CEO

Bob Muglia, a 23-year Microsoft veteran who has also worked for Juniper Networks, is now running a big data startup.

Muglia earlier this month took the CEO job at Snowflake Computing, a San Mateo, Calif.-based startup that's developing a cloud-based data warehousing service, Re/Code reported Wednesday.

Snowflake Computing is keeping a low profile and did not announce Muglia's appointment. He told Re/Code the startup is venture backed and is working with beta customers, but declined to name the investors.

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In a letter to customers posted to Snowflake's website, Muglia said the startup aims to bring a fresh approach to data warehouse systems, which enterprises use to store data for reporting and analytics purposes.

"The ultimate opportunity to gain business insight into modern applications is to build a platform service that was designed from the start to bring data warehousing, the cloud and semi-structured data together," Muglia said in the letter.

Incumbent data warehouse vendors and startups are either shifting on-premise data warehouse systems to the cloud, or trying to combine SQL and Hadoop, which Muglia said is the wrong approach.

"This is what we’re creating at Snowflake Computing – the database that reimagines data warehousing as a cloud service," Muglia said in the letter.

Muglia joined Microsoft in 1988 as a group program manager for SQL Server, Exchange and SNA Server, according to his LinkedIn profile. He spent four years running Microsoft's mammoth Server and Tools business, now called the Cloud and Enterprise group, which hauled in $17.1 billion in Microsoft's fiscal 2011.

Muglia was ousted from that role in January 2011 as part of a management shakeup led by former CEO Steve Ballmer. He joined Juniper a few months later as executive vice president of the vendor's Software Solutions Division, and left Juniper last December.