Rowan Trollope has taken the CEO hot seat at Redis, the real-time data platform provider.
The news comes less than two weeks after he departed Five9, following a successful four-year spell at the CCaaS provider.
During his tenure, its revenues grew by 400 percent.
Yet, with a reputation for liking to build companies, it seems the ideal time for Trollope to move on – with Five9 reaping the rewards of its rearchitected platform and very much set in its path.
Now, he is continuing his mission to improve CX, but from another angle.
Indeed, with Redis, he wants to help businesses build better apps and redesign their products to avoid risking customer loyalty.
“AI is revolutionizing how software is built and is being embedded in virtually every app,” he said. “In response, entrepreneurs have been hard at work inventing the next-generation tech stack.”
From AI tool-chains to front-end frameworks to the database layer, [they aim to] make it easy for developers to build fast, scalable apps with AI at the core.
Redis strives to support entrepreneurs in this mission, a prospect that excites Trollope, a developer at heart.
“[Redis is an] insanely great platform that is loved by developers like me,” he added.
What Does Redis Do?
Created in 2009, Redis rose to prominence after championing the idea that a cache can also store data. From there, it created a system where the main computer memory reads and modifies data, as opposed to much slower discs.
Inspired by this proposition, some of the most popular apps – including Twitter, Pinterest, and craigslist – used Redis to deliver data to end-users, faster.
Soon, clients could also store data naturally, as if using a programming language, instead of squeezing it into tables and JSON documents.
As a result, these businesses began to interact with the database using basic commands.
Now, clients often use Redis’s technology as a cache to speed up relational databases. Yet, it is also available as a primary database, which removes the need for a complex caching layer.
The database is “multi-model”, with add-on modules that users can opt into.
For example, businesses can use the Redis Graph module to dig deeper into data that contains information about relationships. If they want to structure data as a hierarchy, they may turn to Redis JSON.
It also offers modules for AI workloads, time-series data, and much more.
Such a proposition differentiates Redis, according to Trollope. He concluded:
Redis is well positioned to continue disrupting the database market and taking data layer performance to the next level.
A Good Fit for Trollope?
While Redis competes in a different space to Five9 and Cisco – another of his previous companies – Trollope is very familiar with the field.
Indeed, he is still an active software developer, holding numerous patents in computer security and operating systems.
Such skills, matched with his experience in successfully leading a SaaS business, are a significant asset, according to Ofer Bengal, outgoing CEO and co-Founder of Redis. He stated:
Rowan has the ideal combination of successfully leading a public company, long-time experience of driving value for enterprise customers, and developer origins.
“His comprehensive business experience and proven track record delivering cloud technologies are invaluable for Redis and will amplify and strengthen its position in the database management systems market.”
The track record Bengal alludes to includes Trollope’s experience in rearchitecting Five9’s CCaaS platform. Now, it is cloud-native, allowing the vendor to innovate faster, increase ease of integration, and win more business.
Shortly after this process, Zoom almost bought Five9 in a $14.7BN deal, which appeared to be the ideal opportunity for Trollope to bow out.
Yet, after staying for another year, Trollope has now embarked on a more personal mission – which aligns closely with his developer background – to fuel the apps of tomorrow.
