November 30th, 2016: Purple, the intelligent spaces company, today announces its latest high profile appointment with Richard Roberts joining as VP EMEA.
Richard is set to supercharge Purple’s EMEA partnerships and continue its fast growth. He will be responsible for leading the regional team and driving revenue through, and with, Purple’s Customers, Distributors and Channel Partners.
He joins from Cisco UKI, where he was MD Commercial and Partner Sales for the last four years and spent another six years with the Distributed Government and EMEA Advanced Technology Sales and Marketing teams. At Cisco, he forged a reputation as a vibrant and charismatic leader and Channel innovator. Richard is already a Purple convert and has been impressed with the organisation’s performance, ambition and its culture of infinite possibility and optimism.
Richard comments: “This is the opportunity I have been looking for and I am thrilled to be joining the team. I have been involved with Purple for the past three years, during which time the business has flourished in a challenging market. The proposition has evolved to capture the imagination of even the largest of customers.
“There is also a cultural connection, which for me is critical, where core values are shared and where everyone is working for one another. I have seen this in Purple and I am looking forward to becoming a part of it.”
Richard joins Purple at a time of impressive global traction with major service providers, a series of large customer wins and huge growth in platform usage. Purple now boasts 18 million users, with deployments in 73 countries, with offices in the UK, Spain, the US, Singapore and Australia; with more international locations coming soon.
Purple has built a reputation for innovating at the leading edge of technology to deliver insights and empower customers. It is a leader in real-time analytics and marketing for venues and businesses that want to engage with visitors. Through the process of creating ‘Intelligent Spaces’, Purple can help brands to understand customer behaviour in physical spaces, and help them to take action.
Eric Law, Chief Revenue Officer and Head of Worldwide Sales, Purple, comments: “Richard brings a wealth of experience to our EMEA team. He is well positioned to help our customers increase revenue and improve their operations through a rich connected experience provided by Purple. His past experience driving differentiation and profitability with top Partners will allow them sell Purple as a Service as a further springboard for their cloud strategies. We will continue to expand our footprint in the EMEA region with Richard at the helm.”
Gavin Wheeldon, CEO at Purple, comments: “Purple is building a reputation for innovation and excellence. Our results are making waves and so we only want to add the best to our team. Richard is a definite fit for us and we’re really excited to be working with him. I know from personal experience in working with him while he was at Cisco, that he already embodies Purple’s culture. I also have no doubt his strong leadership skills will help us to fulfil our potential in EMEA and I’m looking forward to what is to come.”
About Purple http://www.purple.AI
Purple is an intelligent spaces company. It evolved from Purple WiFi, the cloud-based marketing and analytics WiFi software company, to take the lead in real-time analytics and marketing for venues and businesses that want to engage with visitors and understand the use of physical spaces.
Purple refers to this process as ‘Intelligent Spaces’ and can help brands to learn more about their location, customer base and help them to take action.
With 18 million users across 73 countries, Purple works with a range of brands and venues, including Indiana Pacers, Merlin Entertainment, Bloomin Brands, CenturyLink, Molson Coors, Legoland, Jaguar, United Wireless Arena, City of York and TUI.
It has a global agreement in place with Westcon Comstor, in addition to an active reseller base of over 960 in 60 countries. Purple employs over 90 full time staff and currently has offices in the UK, US, Chile, Madrid, Singapore and Melbourne with more offices planned.
Huge growth is being seen in all sectors, including hospitality, where people have time to spend online, retail, where footfall tracking is essential, healthcare, offering transparency around service and communication and entire cities moving towards the Internet of Things.
Purple divides its offering into two specific segments: small businesses and enterprise customers.
Small businesses can continue to take advantage of Purple’s free guest WiFi product and purchase a cloud software license, which allows open access to marketing and analytics tools.
Enterprise customers have the option of four product lines: WiFi, Location, and two new offerings: Fusion and Provision.
- Purple WiFi is the well-established guest WiFi, analytics and marketing product.
- Purple Location is a location based services product that works to actually pinpoint devices, enable heat mapping, provide zone flow information and enable journey management.
- Purple Fusion is the latest offering, enabling connection to any type of data source, which can then be analysed and actioned. A variety of different data sources will be utilised to harvest information about any physical space.
- Purple Provision is a commercial product more suitable for businesses, enabling a completely secure guest and staff WiFi environment. This uses automatic certificate provisioning instead of WPA or other encrypted WiFi SSID’s, which are intrinsically insecure for a BYOD environment.
Purple Press contacts:
Lloyd Gofton – lloyd@liberatemedia.com – +44 (0) 7919 353 484
Justine Holman – justine@liberatemedia.com – +44 (0) 7808 608416
Catherine Goddard – catherine@liberatemedia.com – +44 (0) 7720 635048