MELBOURNE, Florida— Qligent, a specialist in cloud-based, enterprise-level contentmonitoring and analysis, announces that Robert “Rob” J. Kakareka has joined the company as its new Manager/Business Development. A broadcast industry veteran with extensive sales experience, Kakareka is tasked withdeveloping U.S. sales, customer relationships and market opportunities.
Kakareka reports directly to John Shoemaker, Qligent’s Director of Sales. Atlanta-based Kakarekawill focus on selling the company’s innovative, Vision cloud-based monitoring and compliance platform to U.S. broadcasters, including major networks and call-letter stations.
Qligent’s Vision platform gathers and analyzes data from high-end probes that monitor distinct points along the distribution signal path, out to the last mile. This data enables broadcasters to ascertain that they are delivering an optimal Quality of Experience (QoE) for their viewers, and pinpoint technical issues they need to address.
“I’m excited to be promoting the value and benefits of Qligent’s flagship product, Vision, at a time of rapid change in the broadcast industry,” said Kakareka.“Vision is uniquely positioned to support mission-critical broadcast distribution in a cost-efficient SaaS model as the industry expands from traditional over-the-air, cable and satellite channels to new digital, mobile and over-the-top (OTT) outlets.
“Despite this dramatic IP-centric shift, the broadcast industry remains a close-knit community with unique requirements and workflows,” Kakareka continued. “My goal is to show broadcasters that not only is our technology exceptional, but we have their backs as they venture intonew and emerging market opportunities – including a true Monitoring as a Service business model that offloads monitoring, analysis and troubleshooting responsibilities to our managed services layer.”
With a career spanning over 20 years, Kakareka is no stranger to the broadcast industry, having held strategic sales and business development positionsfor many high-profile brands. These prior posts include Avid (Orad) Graphics Systems (from February 2014 to February 2016), Miranda (February 2012 to March 2014), Pixel Power (February 2008 to February 2012) and BarcoNet (February 2001 to February 2002).
In these national sales roles, Kakareka regularly outperformed sales quotas, broadened customer bases, boosted sales revenues, and built strong customer relationships with broadcasters nationwide. He’s also knowledgeable in all aspects of broadcast television operations, including graphics and virtual reality studio workflows, SaaS digital media services, big data-scaled storage, TV/film production and OTT/cloud workflows.
Kakareka has also tackled complex business development challenges, such as developing new business for Comprehensive Technical Group, while creating new business plans for this system integration firm’s existing clients. While working for systems integrator Technical Innovations/Broadcast Solutions Group (from February 2002 to February 2008), he implemented a sales plan for the rollout of ATSC compliant DTV systems, sold and integrated them at hundreds of stationsacross North America, among othersales achievements.
“In his stellar career, Rob has witnessed this industry’s many transitions firsthand, and that experience will be especially valuable as we engage with broadcasters to demonstrate how our unique, groundbreaking cloud software can solve today’s ‘uncontained’ distribution challenges,” said Shoemaker.“Our company has experienced rapid growth in a short time, and we’re confident that Rob’s industry expertise, insight and track record will help us capitalize on this momentum and significantly expand our U.S. customer base.”
Qligent will exhibit its Vision cloud-based service at IBC2017, from September 15-19, at the RAI Convention Centre(stand 8.E47) in Amsterdam.
ABOUT Qligent
Qligent architects complete monitoring, visualization and delivery analytics solutions for broadcasters, content distributors, ad agencies, regulators and network operators. Based in Melbourne, Florida, Qligent’s software-defined approach provides an open, vendor-agnostic platform to monitor performance, integrity and compliance of multiple signals, streams and systems across enterprises of any size. Its solutions provide the same consistent quality of content and service across multiple delivery platforms simultaneously.
