The battle for top talent in the tech industry isn’t limited to Facebook, Apple and Google quarreling to hire and retain top talent. Splunk, a provider of operational intelligence software, today announced that it has hired David Conte as the company’s first Chief Financial Officer.
Conte comes to Splunk from privately held, venture backed IronKey, the company best known for its secure USB drives of the same name, where he served as CFO since November 2009. Conte will report to Splunk President and CEO Godfrey Sullivan and be responsible for financial planning and analysis, accounting, treasury activities, and investor relations.
Splunk is operational intelligence software used to monitor, report and analyze live streaming IT data. The company added over 900 new customers in 2010, and now counts over 2,600 customers in 78 countries. Splunk provides the ability to manage event data from a wide array of network security devices, including firewalls, intrusion detection/prevention (IDS/IPS) systems, servers, web gateways, and other network and security devices. With Splunk, system administrators and security professionals can navigate and search through log files, alerts, and other “meta data” describing the network event.
“David Conte brings to Splunk extensive background implementing financial processes and controls for private and public software and service companies,” said Splunk President and CEO Godfrey Sullivan.
Prior to IronKey, Conte was at Opsware, formerly Loudcloud, where he held a series of positions over eight years including CFO, VP of Finance, Director of Finance and Corporate Controller. He created and scaled the finance organization, led the implementation of several financial systems, negotiated and led real estate transactions, led the investor relations function and played a key role in several strategic financings. Conte was instrumental in the evolution of the business as a public company until its acquisition for $1.6 billion by Hewlett Packard.
“I am excited to be joining Splunk’s superb leadership team,” said Conte. “My experience in building the financial foundations for fast growth companies will help Splunk continue its solid business practices as the company scales.” Conte began his career at Ernst & Young where he was a recognized expert on software revenue recognition.
Conte served as senior manager in the audit and assurance practice, responsible for worldwide service coordination for clients from start-ups to the Fortune 200 including Sun Microsystems. His specific industry experience includes software, hardware, telecommunications, semiconductor, venture capital and life science sectors. Conte received his BA in Business Economics from the University of California, Santa Barbara. Conte is a certified public accountant in the State of California.
