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| April 11, 2006 | Press Release |
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| Co-Founder of Postini Named CEO of BlueRoads |
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| Portfolio Company: BlueRoads |
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BlueRoads Corporation, a channel management Software-as-a-Service (SaaS)
company, today announced that Shinya Akamine has been appointed Chief Executive
Officer. Mr. Akamine brings experience in building high growth companies,
particularly in the SaaS arena, to help BlueRoads exploit the tremendous market
opportunity for its acclaimed channel management software. To date, BlueRoads
has proven itself to be the premier innovator in technology that improves
indirect channel revenue visibility and predictability. Mr. Akamine, who has
been on BlueRoads' Board of Directors since 2005, will lead the corporation in
its expansion stage by leveraging BlueRoads innovations, customer base and
financial strength.
The demand for channel management solutions continues to rise as corporate
Sales and IT managers struggle to provide ways to increase visibility,
manageability and growth of their channel sales.
"We have given channel sales a high priority in our segmented market strategy
and BlueRoads, which we use in our eDemand tool for members of Avaya's
BusinessPartner program and participants with Avaya in a strategic alliance,
gives us increased visibility and control over indirect revenue opportunities,"
said Gregg Kalman, Avaya's Sales Vice President of Channel Strategies and
Operations. "As importantly, it helps us reduce channel conflict within our
channel reseller base and with our own sales force."
BlueRoads has achieved significant customer traction, particularly in
channel-heavy markets such as security, networking and storage, as demonstrated
by recent customer wins with Avaya, Proofpoint, and Caymas. These companies and
many others have embraced the comprehensive BlueRoads 6 channel management
solution because it enables rapid partner adoption and has tremendous ease of
use. For this reason, BlueRoads was able to recently announce that more than $2
billion in deals were registered in the BlueRoads Deal Manager deal registration
system.
"A great amount of our success is predicated on how easy it is for our
channel partners to work with us," said Eric Hahn, Chairman and Founder of
messaging security vendor Proofpoint, Inc., a BlueRoads customer. "I have
observed first hand how Shinya led rapid growth at his previous companies. Now,
as a BlueRoads customer, I view his joining BlueRoads as a significant value-add
for our relationship."
BlueRoads maintains an aggressive pace in bringing new modular solutions to
the market. In the past 12 months, the company has launched BlueRoads 6, a
Partner Relationship Management (PRM) Module, a Channel Sales Force Automation
(SFA) module and a direct integration to salesforce.com(TM). In addition,
BlueRoads was awarded a patent on it unique automatic lead distribution and
processing confirmation technology. The company also launched the BlueRoads
University, a series of training sessions and workshops to help customers,
partners and prospects better understand and fully utilize channel management
solutions to achieve business goals.
Mr. Akamine takes over BlueRoads with a war chest of over $12 million
available to fuel additional growth and extend its leadership in the channel
management industry. Most recently, Mr. Akamine was co-founder and chief
executive officer of Postini, a leading provider of email security as an
on-demand service. He is also currently a member of the board of directors of
Core Security Technologies. Previously in his career, he was a consultant with
McKinsey & Company and also held vice president and general management positions
at Cygnus Solutions (acquired by Red Hat) and other high tech companies. He is
the inventor of ten patents and was honored in 2004 with an Outstanding Inventor
award by Stanford University. Mr. Akamine holds B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. degrees in
Electrical Engineering from Stanford University.
"I believe the channel management market opportunity is very large and the
SaaS model is the best solution for connecting vendors with their channel
partners which consist of hundreds to thousands of legally separate reseller
organizations," said Mr. Akamine. "I am excited to join BlueRoads because it is
extremely rare to have the opportunity to lead a high growth company that is
exploiting a large new market opportunity and has rich resources in the form of
world class clients, industry leading products and significant financial assets.
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About BlueRoads Corporation
BlueRoads Corporation provides channel management software as a service,
which enables companies to market and sell more effectively through indirect
channels. BlueRoads was recognized by Gartner Group as a "cool vendor," for its
delivery of innovative, impactful and intriguing solutions for the industry.
BlueRoads' impressive customer list includes Avaya, Hitachi Data Systems, Nortel
and many more. The company is headquartered in San Mateo, California and funded
by ArrowPath Venture Capital, Cardinal Venture Capital, and El Dorado Ventures.
For more information about how BlueRoads is helping companies create active
channels with higher returns visit our website at http://www.blueroads.com or
call 650.349.8500.
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