SkyeTek Reports Strong Demand Justifies Larger Sales Operation
Hires VP of Sales and Business Development to Match Large Well-Directed Engineering Team and Favorable Market Timing
Westminster, Colo., March 29, 2006 – SkyeTek, Inc., the leading provider of embedded RFID reader technology and developer of ReaderWare™, today introduced Chris Turner as the company’s Vice President of Sales and Business Development and gave an update on the progress the company has made since raising $8 million in venture financing several months ago.
“Over the last 4 quarters, we’ve nearly doubled hardware and software sales with the most dramatic growth coming from software licenses — a strategic indicator for us,” said Rob Balgley, CEO of SkyeTek, Inc. “With strong sales momentum and confident backing from the venture community, SkyeTek has built one of the largest and most experienced engineering teams in the industry totaling nearly 25 engineers. SkyeTek has hired Chris Turner as VP of Sales and Business Development because of his proven ability to develop large-scale sales partnerships with OEMs and distributors that will allow SkyeTek to grow revenue rapidly.”
Turner comes to SkyeTek from network management provider Intelliden Corporation, where he was VP of Worldwide Sales and Support. At Intelliden, he opened new sales channels in Government and Enterprise that scaled revenue nearly ten times over 3 years to a multi-million dollar run rate. As the VP of Global Sales at Akamai Technologies, Turner managed a global team of 250 with responsibility for all revenue streams. He led the company through a successful transition to enterprise-oriented customers and built an indirect sales model comprised of OEMs, resellers, and systems integrators. Prior to Akamai, he led a highly successful career in IBM’s sales organization covering a span of 10 years. A Harvard MBA, Turner has more than 15 years of experience in developing global technology direct and indirect sales relationships.
Since the introduction of ReaderWare in July of last year, numerous customers have incorporated SkyeTek’s RFID technology as a feature in their products creating new applications for their customers in areas such as patient safety, consumables authentication, point-of-sale efficiency, and mobile workforce productivity. By leading the industry in reader module commoditization and software layer intelligence through ReaderWare, SkyeTek has successfully expanded its footprint in key verticals not traditionally associated with RFID such as medical devices, healthcare, pharmaceuticals, retail, printing, and hospitality.
“SkyeTek’s roadmap, patent portfolio, and engineering capability position the company to lead in what projects to be a very large space as mainstream customer segments realize the opportunity to differentiate by embedding RFID reader technology their products,” noted Turner. “SkyeTek’s distribution strategy is very similar to the software-oriented, indirect sales models at my previous companies. I am excited to accelerate the ongoing success of the company by building a sales organization that can articulate the new applications that are possible today with SkyeTek’s technology.”
To learn more about SkyeTek, ReaderWare, or the company’s management team, visit www.skyetek.com.
About SkyeTek, Inc. SkyeTek, Inc., maker of ReaderWare™, is the leading supplier of RFID reader software and reference designs that enable the pervasive application of RFID technology. SkyeTek’s Tagnostic ™ reader technology works with most industry standard tags and smart labels, its low power requirements and a small form factor make it the optimal choice for embedding into new or existing RFID products. SkyeTek’s RFID reader technology is available in several formats including reader modules, hardware reference designs, and the ReaderWare™ software suite. SkyeTek markets to OEM customers in targeted vertical markets with several high-volume licensing options available. SkyeTek is based in Westminster, Colo. For more information about SkyeTek, visit www.skyetek.com or call 720-565-0441.