Mimecast South Africa announces new Executive appointments

Mimecast, the leading supplier of cloud-based email archiving, security and continuity for Microsoft Exchange, Hosted Exchange and Office 365 announced three appointments to its executive management. Johannesburg-based Garth Wittles joins Mimecast’s global leadership as CXO. Brandon Bekker takes over as local MD and Christelle Hicklin has been promoted to Customer Experience Director for South Africa.

Garth Wittles

Garth Wittles has been appointed Chief Experience Officer (CXO), a global role which aligns the company’s customer experience strategy across all of its operations, ensuring the continuation of its reputation as a provider of excellent customer service. Previously Garth was managing director for the South African operation for the last 10 years. He was responsible for growing Mimecast South Africa’s sales by over 50% year on year through key account acquisitions and established the company as a cloud leader.

Brandon Bekker

Brandon Bekker takes over as Managing Director of Mimecast South Africa. He will combine responsibility for the local operation’s business strategy with its expansion plan into Africa. Mimecast already enjoys an extensive network of partners in 16 countries within the continent. Bekker has been with Mimecast since January 2008 and was previously Sales Director and brings over 15 years’ experience in sales, sales training and certification, as well as implementing various programmes aimed at building new revenue streams.

Christelle Hicklin

Lastly, Christelle Hicklin has been promoted to Customer Experience Director for South Africa and will continue to build Mimecast’s efforts to provide outstanding customer support. Hicklin has been with Mimecast since 2010 and looks after customer account and relationship management, as well as the service delivery and education teams within the company.

“Mimecast has always strived to deliver beyond customer expectations. This is more easily said than done and we believe that our happy customers are the reason we have grown so rapidly. In today’s world, reputation is everything and we have to work hard at preserving and building on our past performance for all our stakeholders,” says Wittles.

“As Mimecast grows beyond 7,000 customers and 500 staff across many global offices, the increasing complexity also needs to be managed. We need to maintain a culture of customer experience excellence, as well as systems that keep pace and think ahead of our customer service requirements,” he adds.

Earlier this year, BackChannel Research’s bi-annual Hosted Email Security Report revealed that Mimecast has re-enforced its position as South African leader in the managed email security market, accounting for 40% of industry adoption – up from 31% in January 2012.

Notably, the report also highlights the emergence of Mimecast as a favoured supplier of cloud-based services in six sectors such as retail, construction, finance, wholesale trade, service industries and mining.

Staff writer