Clickatell bolsters global enterprise infrastructure, hires seasoned executives

Clickatell, global provider of mobile messaging solutions and Sequoia Capital-backed company, today announced further investments in its critical enterprise infrastructure to support the millions of mobile text messages (SMS) already being sent around the globe.

The company also announced it has hired two key executives, Chuck Drake as Executive Vice-President of Marketing, and Bill Wolfe as Executive Vice-President of Research & Development.

"I am pleased to be working with Chuck and Bill, who have demonstrated leadership in helping customers understand how they can use enabling technologies to gain a clear competitive advantage," stated Pieter de Villiers, CEO of Clickatell.

"From mobile marketing and branding initiatives to time-critical alerts, enterprises and small to medium businesses are taking advantage of mobile messaging and the tremendous opportunity to reach their customers in new ways."

With over 8 000 active customers worldwide, including Barclays Bank, BBC, CNN, FNB, and Oracle, Clickatell has proven itself as the leader in providing mobile messaging solutions to large enterprise organisations and delivering online SMS services for small to medium businesses. With the explosion of cellphone usage, mobile messaging is fast becoming a ubiquitous and cost-effective way to communicate directly to customers, partners, and employees.

Clickatell is bolstering its worldwide facilities to meet the growing demand for SMS messages being sent globally for a multitude of applications. Having expanded coverage to include an additional 85 networks, Clickatell supports more networks and carriers than any other messaging provider in the world.

Clickatell has further upgraded its enterprise-grade facilities to include hosted services, receiving the SAS 70 stamp of approval, a widely recognised standard used as a proof point used by Chief Security Officers to examine the due diligence process needed to assure data security, safety and integrity.

Within its existing 24x7 system, Clickatell has significantly extended its customer support capability by enhancing Quality of Service (QOS) and reliability of its IT infrastructure, which is built on the Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL) framework, a set of industry guidelines and best practice techniques for managing IT infrastructure, development, and operations.

In addition to these enterprise-grade additions to its facilities, Clickatell has added network support in Mexico, Brazil, Chile, Argentina, Peru, Paraguay, Puerto Rico, and Guam, and has also increased reliability in China, Hong Kong, and Japan.

In addition, Clickatell has hired Chuck Drake as Executive Vice-President of Global Marketing, and Bill Wolfe as Executive Vice-President of Research & Development. These two executives are poised to bring a strong focus in the financial services sector and building large infrastructures to support millions of mobile transactions.

Drake joins Clickatell from MarkMonitor and Corillian, where he led both companies to achieve market leadership status in their respective software as a service (SaaS) and enterprise software markets serving financial services, retail, manufacturing, high technology, CPG and other verticals worldwide.

Wolfe joins Clickatell from VeriSign and Openwave Systems, where he was responsible for managing critical business cycles to provide complex, intelligent, highly secure, and reliable enterprise infrastructures to deliver core communications services targeting the entertainment, technology, and telecommunications markets.