Percona, a global leader in enterprise-grade open source database software and services, today announced the addition of two preeminent technology business leaders – John Newton, Co-Founder of Alfresco and Documentum, and Rob Young, a veteran of the open source software ecosystem – as independent directors to its board. The appointments expand the wealth of business strategy, industry expertise and strategic counsel the Percona board offers CEO Ann Schlemmer and her leadership team.
John Newton brings over 40 years of experience in the enterprise software industry, having played a pivotal role in the development and success of numerous companies. A serial entrepreneur, John co-founded Documentum, which was acquired by EMC in 2003, and Alfresco, an open source platform for information management, which had a successful exit with its sale to Hyland Software in 2020. John began his career as one of the founding engineers at Ingres Corporation, where he led the development of their database management system. His innovative contributions to data and information management have earned him several prestigious awards, including recognition as a Technology Pioneer at the World Economic Forum in Davos in 2006 and the Award of Merit from the Association for Intelligent Information Management (AIIM) in 2023. John holds a BS in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from the University of California, Berkeley, and has served on the boards of several leading companies, including Alfresco, Wideworks, and AIIM.
Rob Young is a seasoned business and technology executive with four decades of experience in building and delivering enterprise solutions through an open source development and delivery model. During his career, Rob has held key technical and leadership positions across various industries, including finance, transportation, healthcare, public utilities, and commercial software and services. Rob has been a driving force in establishing open source software as a trusted foundation for digital transformation. He was instrumental in developing growth strategies and business models focused on value-added differentiation and customer satisfaction in numerous strategic roles at MySQL AB, MongoDB, Percona, RedHat, and DigitalOcean. Notably, while with MySQL AB, Rob led the design, development, and delivery of MySQL Enterprise, which quadrupled the company’s revenue in just two years and culminated in a $1 billion acquisition by Sun Microsystems. Rob holds a Bachelor of Science in Economics and Math from the University of Louisville and resides in Louisville, KY.
“We are honored to welcome John Newton and Rob Young to our board,” said Ann Schlemmer, CEO of Percona. “Their extensive experience and deep understanding of the industry will be invaluable as we continue to innovate and deliver world-class solutions to our customers. Their leadership and vision will be crucial as we navigate the opportunities and challenges ahead, ensuring we maintain the highest standards of corporate governance.”
These appointments come at a pivotal time for Percona as the company reaffirms its commitment to cloud-native development with the introduction of Percona Everest and expands its footprint into the Redis ecosystem through its involvement with the Linux Foundation’s Valkey Project. With the addition of John Newton and Rob Young, Percona is well-positioned to accelerate growth and continue its mission of empowering enterprises with robust, reliable, and scalable open source database solutions.
