AppRiver: Small Business of the Month

The Pensacola Bay Area Chamber of Commerce is pleased to AppRiver, LLC has been selected as the January Small Business of the Month.

“We started with two guys and a spam trap,” quipped co-founders Michael Murdoch and Joel Smith when asked about their 2002 start-up company, AppRiver, LLC.

Today, 25,500 organizations and businesses, worldwide, depend on AppRiver for simple, yet powerful email security and messaging collaboration technology. Beginning with two employees, they now employ 45 people at their Gulf Breeze headquarters and rank as one of the largest email security managed service providers.

CEO Michael Murdoch, with more than two decades of high-tech industry experience, is the chief architect of AppRiver’s business strategies. In addition, he is responsible for financial management and building the senior management team.

Serving as Chief Technology Officer, Pensacola native Joel Smith, with 15 years of technology sector experience, leads the Research& Development team and the Network Operations Center. Murdoch said of Smith, “He is the technical visionary, without a doubt.”

Scott Cutler, Executive Vice President, is responsible for all Sales and Marketing activities and has been instrumental in building the company’s extensive worldwide customer base using an international channel distribution strategy. “While the Internet makes it possible to operate a global business from Gulf Breeze, the success we’ve enjoyed thus far is a direct result of the quality of our people” said Cutler.

However, AppRiver is not content to sit on its laurels.  This past September they joined forces with Pensacola-based Creative Data Concepts to form GridSouth Networks, LLC. With a $100,000 grant from WIRED Northwest Florida Initiative Governance Council, all systems are on go for GridSouth Networks!

Also not content to simply enjoy their own success, AppRiver and its employees have sponsored and participated in many local charitable events. To contact AppRiver, call 850/932-5338 or visit www.appriver.com.

For more information about the Small Business of the Month program, call Summer Burdick at 850/438-4081 ext. 258