Business

File transfer specialist Signiant announced July 10 that it’s bringing back former VP of product management Rick Clarkson, installing the industry vet into the newly created role of chief strategy officer. Clarkson first joined Signiant in late 2007 as a member of the company’s product management team, before being named VP in 2011, a position that saw him play a key role in the launch of Media Shuttle, Signiant’s first SaaS offering. From late 2015 until June this year, Clarkson worked on the SaaS/cloud product management team for Boston’s SevOne.

“When we first discussed the idea of Media Shuttle with customers, many M&E executives told us point blank that they would never consider SaaS,” Clarkson said. “Six years later, the industry has evolved to a point where SaaS is fully accepted, cloud-native design is widely understood, and Signiant is the established market leader.”

“We’re delighted to welcome Rick back to the Signiant team,” said Margaret Craig, CEO of Signiant. “The company has huge momentum right now. With our software playing an increasingly pivotal role in the media industry’s technical infrastructure, customer interest in collaborating with Signiant to solve mission-critical problems has never been higher. Rick is the ideal person to serve as our focal point for this engagement and to connect the dots between emerging technologies, market dynamics, and internal innovations. His understanding of our technology and creative energy make Rick uniquely suited to navigate through this phase of high growth and increasingly strategic customer relationships.”

In his new role, Clarkson will be in charge of overseeing new services for Signiant’s SaaS business and steering the company’s direction in the media and entertainment industry.

“With the media industry going through a phase of rapid transformation, many elements of legacy infrastructure are ripe for SaaS disruption,” he said. “Signiant transport is now mission-critical in every part of the media supply chain as changing media consumption patterns drive an explosion of content, device proliferation, bigger files, and cloud adoption.

“Our ubiquitous SaaS platform not only provides the transport underpinnings, but also delivers intelligent metadata-enabled services facilitated by its multi-tenant, cloud-native architecture. I’m excited to join the team to accelerate the launch of new value-add services to meet the complex and ever-changing needs of modern media operations.”