February 12, 2007

Actix Names Amdocs CRM Veteran CEO

By David Sims, TMCnet Contributing Editor

Actix, a vendor of systems that "enhance mobile network customer experience while reducing the total cost of ownership," has announced the appointment of Alex Hawker as Chief Executive Officer.

Hawker joins Actix from CRM vendor Amdocs (News - Alert), where he was responsible for global sales. The appointment completes a planned transition from founder CEO Rob Dobson, who will continue to serve as a non-executive director, Actix officials say.

Prior to joining Actix, Hawker was a senior executive at Amdocs, a major company in the telecoms OSS space with $2.48 billion in annual sales, 16,000 employees and an annual growth of 18 percent per year.

Most recently he served as Amdocs' Corporate VP and General Manager of Global Sales, managing both the sales and operations teams.

Hawker was involved with Amdocs' five major acquisitions in the last 18 months, ran the Amdocs Clarify CRM business unit and has previously held senior management positions at companies that include Openwave and HP, where he was responsible for over $2 billion of annual sales to HP's largest carrier customers, Actix officials say.

Last month Amdocs launched Amdocs 7, what company officials called "the first industry-specific software suite that allows service providers to offer access to any service, over any network, at any time and on any device."

Company officials said this is made possible by "the move to next-generation networks and the convergence of voice, video, data, content, and entertainment."

Results of a survey commissioned by Amdocs, also announced today, indicate that providers expect big revenue jumps from such convergent services and plan to boost spending to deliver a superior customer experience.

With revenue from convergent services expected to grow more than 20 percent over the next two years, the modular Amdocs 7 suite is being positioned on the market as making it "easier and more cost-effective for telecoms, broadband cable and satellite providers to launch these next-generation services, bundle them and offer incentive pricing to customers."

The CRM vendor recently reported that for the quarter ended December 31, 2006, revenue was $691 million, an increase of 17.7 percent from last year's first quarter.

David Sims is a contributing editor for TMCnet. For more articles please visit David Sims' columnist page.

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(source: http://news.tmcnet.com/news/-actix-amdocs-/2007/02/12/2330395.htm)