Instaclustr Appoints Apache Software Foundation Board Member Sharan Foga to Lead Community and Developer Relations
The experienced leader and champion of open source communities joins Instaclustr as its Director of Community and Developer Relations
REDWOOD CITY, Calif – December 20, 2021 – Instaclustr, which helps organizations deliver applications at scale by operating and supporting their open source data infrastructure, today announced that Sharan Foga has joined the company as the Director of Community and Developer Relations. In this role, Foga will support and encourage new participation and growth across the open source communities Instaclustr is active in, such as Apache Cassandra®, Apache Kafka®, and OpenSearch™.
Foga comes to Instaclustr with more than 30 years of technology industry experience. Her professional focus has been the successful management and delivery of complex projects.
She has served on many large multinational and cross-functional project teams, delivering on global IT strategic business initiatives, across a wide range of industries. Involved with the Apache Software Foundation (ASF) since 2008, Foga is a current ASF board member and has more than five years of experience leading Apache community development. From 2017 until joining the board this year, Foga served as the Vice President of Apache Community Development, where she was the primary liaison between the Apache Board of Directors and the Apache Community Development (ComDev) team. Foga continues as an active project management committee (PMC) member and committer for the Apache ComDev team, where she promotes initiatives that welcome new contributors into Apache communities. She is also a PMC member of Apache OFBiz®, Apache Kibble®, and the Apache Incubator®, and the current Chair and Vice President of Apache Kibble®.
Foga also holds extensive hands-on experience with data infrastructure technology. Prior to joining Instaclustr, she worked in close collaboration with the data science team at Sandvik, the materials engineering enterprise based in Sweden, to promote internal digital transformation and deliver data-driven solutions.
Instaclustr defines itself by the commitment to providing open source data infrastructure technologies in their fully open source versions, offering customers a safe haven from the limitations and costs of vendor and technical lock-in common with “open core” alternatives. This commitment aligns perfectly with Foga’s own career-long dedication to open source, making her ideally suited to lead Instaclustr’s community and developer relations. Instaclustr’s internal team includes active contributors to each of the Apache projects available on the Instaclustr platform.
Quotes
“Instaclustr matches my own enthusiasm for open source, and its ability to empower developers,” said Sharan Foga, Director of Community and Developer Relations, Instaclustr. “The company continues to be a respected open source citizen, actively supporting and giving back to the open source communities it’s involved in. Instaclustr’s internal culture absolutely embodies the spirit of open source, and I feel very much at home in this open and collaborative environment. I’m very much looking forward to leading the company’s community and developer relations, and to helping the strong and evolving communities around the technologies Instaclustr is involved with to become ever more vibrant and inviting to all.”
“Sharan brings a contagious passion for community building and an experienced history of success that makes us fortunate to have her at the helm of our community and developer relations,” said Ben Bromhead, CTO and Co-Founder, Instaclustr. “Her continuing leadership at the Apache Software Foundation reflects that dedication and expertise, and we are thrilled to have her join our team.”
About Instaclustr
Instaclustr helps organizations deliver applications at scale through its platform for open source technologies such as Apache Cassandra®, Apache Kafka®, Apache Spark™, Redis™, OpenSearch™, Apache ZooKeeper™, and PostgreSQL®. Instaclustr combines a complete data infrastructure environment with hands-on technology expertise to ensure ongoing performance and optimization. By removing infrastructure complexity, Instaclustr enables companies to focus internal development and operational resources on building cutting-edge, customer-facing applications at lower cost. Instaclustr customers include some of the largest and most innovative Fortune 500 companies.