Hazelcast Announces New Executive Hires as Enterprises Demand Real-Time Solutions

Karen Smith joins as Chief Revenue Officer and Tamzyn Furse as Chief People Officer

Palo Alto, Calif., May 11, 2022 – Hazelcast, Inc., home of the real-time data platform, is announcing the hiring of Karen Smith as Chief Revenue Officer and Tamzyn Furse as Chief People Officer. These additions to the Hazelcast leadership team are focused on accelerating the company’s rapid rise and continued growth by enabling the real-time economy.

Enterprises have realized they can no longer succeed by acting tomorrow on what happened today. To leverage data as a strategic asset and competitive advantage, businesses must act the moment an opportunity presents itself. 

Acting in real-time requires more than fast analysis; it requires immediate, contextually-driven action within extremely short timeframes. The unique attribute of the Hazelcast Platform is its ability to process new data, such as events and streams, and simultaneously unify it with historical contextual data drawn from databases and enable the world to act instantaneously on data everywhere.

“Hazelcast has created strong momentum in the market by filling a vast, unmet need for companies to be able to act in real-time,” said Kelly Herrell, CEO of Hazelcast. “This unique focus has driven revenue growth to accelerate every year for the past four years and delivered top-quartile business metrics. We’re pleased to add Karen and Tamzyn, two esteemed executives, to the team and help us take our stakeholders to the next level.”

Smith is a results-oriented sales leader with a 20-year record of success and joins Hazelcast from Uniphore, which recently raised a $400 million Series E round. While at Uniphore, Smith led the sales organization and helped the company grow more than 700% in size over two years.

“I’m thrilled to be part of such an innovative technology leader and help scale their award-winning solutions and customer base. The real-time economy is here already, and Hazelcast is empowering companies to act instantaneously on data so they can thrive within it,” said Smith. 

Furse is a highly experienced global senior HR leader who came to Hazelcast from Emarsys, the largest independent marketing platform globally, before being acquired by SAP in 2020. Her ability to grow, develop and retain world-class talent will be critical to the company’s ambitious hiring targets.

“With such an amazing team and solid leadership, we are extremely well-positioned to accelerate our global growth through people,” said Furse. “My passion has always been helping global businesses thrive during the scale-up phases through people-centric initiatives, and that’s exactly where Hazelcast is today.”

Smith and Furse join a growing global team focused on building the industry’s most advanced real-time data platform. In March 2022, the latest updates to the Hazelcast Platform were announced and expanded the capabilities for combining data streaming with an in-memory data store to enable customers to enrich and unify streaming data as it arrives with the historical context in real-time. In fact, 76 of the Global 2000 companies – including 24 of the world’s largest banks, eight of the largest retailers and six of the largest telecoms – leverage the Hazelcast platform to immediately and continuously derive value from data. 

About Hazelcast, Inc.

Hazelcast, Inc. is the home of the real-time data platform that enables enterprises to capture value at every moment. With Hazelcast, enterprises can increase actionable insights by unifying event streams with contextual insights from traditional data stores at in-memory speeds. From the cloud to the data center to the edge, Hazelcast is unique in transforming processes to help its customers achieve a competitive advantage via material revenue generation, risk management or cost reduction.

Hazelcast is headquartered in Palo Alto, CA, with offices across the globe. To learn more about Hazelcast, visit https://hazelcast.com.

Hazelcast Media Contact
Matt Wolpin
Sr. Director of Communications, Hazelcast
[email protected]