Clickatell honored with Idea and Innovation Award by the San Jose/Silicon Valley Business Journal

Clickatell wins Idea and Innovation Award

Redwood City, CA - Clickatell, the global leader in Personalized Priority Messaging (PPM), announced today that it has won the San Jose/Silicon Valley Business Journal Idea and Innovation award for Social/Economic Impact for providing a service that improves people's daily lives in a significant and tangible way. Clickatell was recognized by The Business Journal at a ceremony held to honor the new directions in the world of technology and science, paying tribute to Silicon Valley's unique position in driving new thinking and advanced technology progress.

The event was held at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, and featured winners from biotech, software, hardware and consumer products. "The goal of the Idea and Innovation Awards was to recognize some of the most innovative products and people here in Silicon Valley," said publisher James MacGregor. "Several of the honorees have achieved a lot in a very short amount of time and the companies are truly groundbreaking."

Clickatell provides a solution that enables simpler, quicker and better delivery of high value, just-in-time, individualized mobile messages such as text alerts that can significantly improve people's day-to-day lives in terms of safety, convenience, awareness, and savings. As mobile use continues to climb, Clickatell's SMS Gateway is gaining more recognition as a powerful and cost-effective channel of targeted real-time communications, marketing and customer interaction, and emergency use in remote areas where Internet access is unreliable or non-existent. As an example of how Clickatell is making a positive impact on society, emergency alert services like MapAlerter and Universal Alert use Clickatell in rescue efforts including incident and damage assessment, mobilization of rescue workers, transmission of emergency instructions, and managing evacuations.

Following the earthquake in Haiti, Clickatell extended free SMS messaging services to organizations providing aid and helped to reunite missing children with their families. The ubiquity of SMS allowed the lines of communications to remain open during emergency services and disaster relief efforts. The 'store and forward' nature of SMS meant that messages could be delivered as soon as there was a 'window' of network coverage -- and this window didn't need to last more than a few seconds. As a result, many organizations in Haiti were using SMS services to communicate even as the capacities of networks were stretched thin.

"It is an honor to be recognized as a leader in delivering innovation that has a measurable impact on improving people's ability to communicate, work and live more efficiently, and stay safe and informed," said Clickatell CEO Pieter de Villiers, who was at the event in Mountain View to accept the award. "We're just beginning to see how mobile messaging is changing lives, not just for business-to-consumer interaction, but also for emergency alerts. At Clickatell, we are making it easy and cost effective to connect people, companies, ideas, and help in times of increased competition and conflict."