Last year Yahoo spun off a sizable portion of its analytics team under a new name: Hortonworks. The startup has since expanded its services portfolio with the launch of the HortonWorks Data Platform, its very own Apache Hadoop distribution, and it’s not having a hard time finding new clients.

This week the big data firm appointed Herb Cunitz as its president. The executive will be responsible for expanding worldwide operations and sales for Hortonworks, and he has all the right qualifications for the job. Prior to joining the company Cunitz served in several senior executive roles, including a tenure at VMware as the head of its cloud business.

“Now that Hortonworks is in market with a product it needs to scale its sales. That’s what this executive appointment is all about in my view,” said Wikibon co-founder and senior analyst Dave Vellante. “The race is on for platform and service leadership and Hortonworks is investing to be in the thick of things.”

What’s also worth a mention is that Cuntiz joined VMware after it acquired Springsource, where he was also in charge of worldwide sales. Springsource was funded by Benchmark Capital, a Silicon Valley VC that owns a sizable stake of the big data startup. Partner Rob Bearden stepped in as Hortonwork’s COO shortly after a very sizable funding round.

“Hortonworks is bringing in the best of what Benchmark did with other open source startups, like Red hat and Springsource,” says SiliconAngle founder John Furrier.

Just like Cuntiz, Burden also has a very impressive resume. In addition to being a Venture Partner at Benchmark he also sits on the board of Pentaho, another analytics firm, and was COO of Springsource before it was gobbled up by VMware. He also played a key role at JBoss before it merged with Red Hat.