Big data software is becoming increasingly commoditized in the cloud (AWS, GCP, Azure) so Cloudera's only market is to sell to C-suites that fear or are misinformed on what is available on cloud platforms.

In the long run, we'll all be in the cloud. But in the long run we're all dead. Between now and the long-run, there's lots of money to be made on-prem.

Databricks announced at the Spark Summit East '17 that they had over 400 customers. That's just a fraction of Cloudera's numbers. I guess on-prem can also get higher ARR than in the cloud right now. Cloudera will probably buy their way to the cloud.

While the cloud providers are hollowing out part of the market, there's still brisk trade to be done with folk who won't or can't do their stuff in the public crowd.

Healthcare, finance, government organisations of varying purposes. That sort of thing.

Disclosure: I work for Pivotal, we have a Hadoop-related product (Pivotal HDB) as part of our Big Data Suite. I guess that makes us competitors with Cloudera.

I'm not sure a disclosure is required for a comment like this one.

Think of the disclosure as one more opportunity to quote his company name.

Disclosure: I work for Pivotal. Insofar as my disclosures raise the expected value of my options by fourteen trillionths of a percent, I have a conflict of interest by saying Pivotal Pivotal Pivotal.

On the bright side, you're allowed to quote your company. Have a thought for poor people like me who are not.

I have a cautious nature, informed by a mix of law school and flamewars.

I really think you overestimate the rate at which Fortune-500 companies transition their core infrastructure to the cloud.

"C-suites" at F500 companies are not as stupid as they look, they just have limited technical resources to execute but plenty of $$$ to give to companies that can provide high-touch services.