Exclusive: Cloudera bets on AI and hybrid cloud as demand shifts

Business is good at Cloudera.

That was the clear message from Chief Revenue Officer Frank O'Dowd and APAC Business Head Remus Lim, who spoke with TechDay about the company's growth, the changing technology landscape, and the pressures clients face as they balance innovation with cost control.

Lim, who has been with the company for six years and runs the Asia-Pacific business from Singapore, explained the regional spread: "We have offices across the region. Singapore is HQ that covers ASEAN, and we even have business in Cambodia and Myanmar." His focus is firmly on customers.

O'Dowd, based in Florida, oversees global sales, professional services and operations. He described his role as one that often sees him directly in front of clients. "Plenty of times we're engaged together with clients and our clients range from public sector all the way through every industry around the world," he said.

Regulated industries focus

Cloudera has carved out success in highly regulated sectors. "Complexity and high regulation are our friend," O'Dowd said. "Financial services, telcos, healthcare, public sector - they're all great, but the largest retailers in the world use Cloudera, the largest manufacturers too."

Government work is one of its fastest-growing areas. "We do a lot of work with federal governments, even state and local governments in the United States or regional governments elsewhere," O'Dowd said. Lim added that in Australia, the Department of Defence is among the customers. "We do work with a lot of those agencies. We're not allowed to talk about some of the specifics, but the complexity and how they use our solutions tie in well for their needs," O'Dowd explained.

Majority channel

The sales model differs by geography. "For APAC, we do work channels, obviously, because we have a very diverse market, and we don't do direct in all markets," Lim said. About "85 to 90 per cent" of transactions go through partners, from resellers to consulting giants such as IBM, Capgemini and KPMG. Globally, O'Dowd said, the mix shifts: "Certain markets, like the United States, the vast majority is direct, but we do work with partners in every region."

India is a market with particular momentum. Lim said the country was entering a new phase. "We are beginning to see modernisation of the data platform that encompasses AI. We are seeing a lot of such projects within the Indian market," he said. O'Dowd added, "India is a rapidly growing market. We're doing very well in India."

Cloud and on-premises

Cloudera sees itself as offering clients freedom of choice in how they manage their data. "Some markets are more cloud inclined, other markets are cloud averse," O'Dowd explained. "Certain industries don't want their data in the cloud. That's what separates us from most of our competition - we recommend what is best for them."

He rejected the idea that investment in on-premises comes at the expense of cloud. "We're investing heavily in both," he said. "We're one of the few vendors that is also investing heavily to ensure that on premise is as modern and elegant and easy to use and has the same functionality."

Cloud costs are also driving clients to re-evaluate. "The Gold Rush to get to the cloud has kind of slowed," O'Dowd said. "People are still doing it, but now they're evaluating what is best. Some markets were ahead of others and others have the advantage of seeing what went wrong."

Cost pressures and AI

Both executives acknowledged that customers are under cost strain. "Everyone will tell you they want to do more with less," Lim said. "Even OCBC, they are doing really well, but they are still very cautious in terms of spending. By implementing Gen AI they can potentially reduce costs."

For O'Dowd, the consolidation of vendors is part of the answer: "It's not necessarily spend less, it's I want to reduce the number of vendors. The fact that we're able to do more is an advantage."

AI is now central to every client conversation. "Gen AI is top of their mind," Lim said. "We have a lot of customers not just talking, they have actually deployed." O'Dowd agreed: "Globally, every conversation has an AI portion. Everybody wants to know what other people are doing."

Yet adoption is uneven. When the audience was asked who was working on AI agents, almost no hands went up. O'Dowd thought the silence misleading. "I don't think that was a true response. Maybe it was a little shyness," he said. "Certainly, agentic AI is throughout the world right now."

Competition and acquisitions

Competition remains fierce. Lim said in Asia-Pacific, rivals such as Snowflake were less visible in highly regulated markets but sometimes present in the telco sector. O'Dowd listed hyperscalers such as Microsoft, Amazon and Google among competitors as well as partners. "We compete with all of them as well as partner with them," he said. "It's co-opetition. We partner with them every day and we compete with them every day."

Recent acquisitions are helping Cloudera expand capabilities. "We acquired Octopai, a data lineage tool, back in October," O'Dowd said. "They had zero customers in APAC when we acquired them, and as of this most recent quarter, there are now multiple customers using Octopai in this region." Another purchase was Taikun, a Kubernetes company in Prague. "We got our data services running on their platform very quickly. We're absolutely in acquisitive mode," O'Dowd explained.

Looking ahead

Despite economic caution, the executives struck an optimistic tone. "We expect to continue to grow as a company. We expect to grow even further, to increase our growth rate," O'Dowd said.

Lim summed up the importance of laying foundations. "You can't have AI without data, and that foundation has to be strong," he said.

O'Dowd ended on a similarly pragmatic note. "Good data is still at the root of all these discussions," he said.