Todd Papaioannou at Structure 2010 cocktail event at GigaOM offices. Photo by Om Malik
Former Yahoo VP and chief cloud architect Todd Papaioannou is working on a stealth-mode startup called Continuuity, which aims to make it easier for developers to create data-focused cloud applications. The company is based in Palo Alto, Calif., and has raised a $ 2.5 million seed round from Battery Ventures, where Papaioannou had been serving as an entrepreneur in residence, and Andreessen-Horowitz.
Continuuity is keeping details on exactly what it’s doing vague for the time being, but Papaioannou, who has been working in the big data space for about a decade at Teradata, Greenplum and Yahoo, said he thinks “cloud and big data are the two mega trends of this decade.” They will shape the way companies build infrastructure and handle data, he said, and they’re leading to an era where “the data fabric is the next middleware.”
Continuuity wants to help new developers build apps that can leverage those trends, but with less difficultly than Yahoo, Facebook and other fast followers experienced in building out their massive applications. Papaioannou said he’s put together a great team, too, which brings together folks from Yahoo, Facebook, IBM, Teradata and Greenplum, among other places.
The company will formally unveil itself in March.
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