Telcentris Appoints Cliff Rees as President to Drive Business Sales Growth Strategy
January 11, 2012
Seasoned telecom entrepreneur played key role in founding and developing some of Voice over Internet industry's most successful companies
SAN DIEGO – January 11, 2012 – Telcentris Inc., a leader in cloud communications and the creator of VoxOx and VoxOx In Business, today announced that the company has named Cliff Rees as its president, overseeing operations, sales, business development, and product management. Cliff has more than 25 years of experience as an executive and entrepreneur in the telecommunications industry. His expertise is rooted in building new businesses and rapidly growing existing ones. He is well known for his instrumental role in the success of Telegroup, where he spent 10 years as founder, president and CEO, growing the business from concept to a NASDAQ-listed company with $330 million in sales and more than 1000 employees globally.
"We are thrilled to add such an extraordinary business talent as Cliff to our executive team," said Bryan Hertz, CEO of Telcentris. "We have observed notable growth in the realm of our business services, and think that Cliff is the person to take our successes in this area to the next level."
Prior to Telcentris, Cliff held executive leadership and founding roles with a number of global VoIP providers, including Leading Edge Communications, which offers SIP Trunking solutions; XCast Labs, Inc., a developer of Software as a Service (SaaS) VoIP applications, which sells residential, SIP Trunking and hosted IP-PBX services; and GlobalTouch Telecom, Inc., a switched-based carrier with its own proprietary Internet telephony technology.
Cliff also served as president of Convergia, Inc., where he managed all aspects of the business in implementing a pan-American VoIP network in Canada, U.S., Mexico, Venezuela, Brazil, Peru, Ecuador, Argentina and Chile. With Cliff's leadership, the company grew from $0 in sales in October 2001 to $4 million in December, 2002.
In addition, Cliff held executive positions at World Access, Inc., where he was responsible for operating licenses and other strategic relationships with incumbent carriers and new telecom entrants in key European, Asia-Pacific, African and Latin American markets. He was also responsible for all aspects of North American sales, marketing and operations, which included 400+ employees and an annual revenue stream of $450 million. During his tenure, World Access closed eight acquisitions totaling more than $1 billion in annual revenue.
Cliff graduated summa cum laude with a Bachelor of Science in biochemistry from Michigan State University, East Lansing, Michigan. He is the recipient of the Iowa/ Nebraska Telecommunications Entrepreneur of the Year Award, sponsored by Ernst and Young. He is a founding member of the Board of Directors of the Telecommunications Resellers Association (TRA), which is now merged into CompTel, and served from its inception in 1991 until 1999.
"I am more than excited about the opportunity to create further momentum for Telcentris and its VoxOx In Business products," said Rees. "VoIP is an incredibly prolific market right now and with the innovative back-end and front-end technologies Telcentris offers, there is much more in store for this company."
For more information on the Telcentris team, please visit www.telcentris.com. To learn more about the company's VoxOx In Business products and services, please visit www.telcentris.com/voxoxinbusiness.
About Telcentris, Inc.
Telcentris is an innovator in cloud-based unified communications and VoIP solutions for consumer, business and wholesale markets. For consumers, Telcentris delivers VoxOx, a free service that integrates voice, text, chat, fax, social networking and more. For businesses, Telcentris provides VoxOx In Business – a complete suite of VoIP business phone solutions that are more cost effective, efficient and easier to manage than traditional phone systems. Through a wholesale division, Telcentris also offers turnkey VoIP solutions and carrier services. The foundation of the company's offerings is its award-winning unified communications platform in the cloud that enables the company and its customers to build powerful, scalable applications and services. Founded in 2006, Telcentris is headquartered in San Diego. For more information, please visit www.telcentris.com.
