First established in 1999 Cleartext pioneered secure IM with a secure Enterprise IM platform called CipherIM. The company re-launched and moved into Managed Services in 2005. ClearEmail a professional email hosting service was launched in 2006 and ClearEmail MX Managed Email Security in 2007. The company launched ClearEmail EDM in February 2008.

David Banes, Co-Founder & Managing Director/CEO (Sydney)

David has many years experience in IT starting in the UK before moving to North America and then Australia. He is responsible for the company strategy, planning and overseeing the services we offer from technology to sales and marketing.

His personal blog is here and he's held positions at, in reverse chronological order;

• Cleartext, Co-Founder and Managing Director
• MessageLabs Asia Pacific
  (Technical Director, Media Spokesperson & Public Speaker, Member of Global Strategy Group)
• Symantec Asia Pacific
  (Regional Manager Security Response, Media Spokesperson)
• Cool Bananas Ventures
  (Managing Director, Web and Software developer)
• Loadplan Australia
  (Marketing Manager)
• Dr Solomons Anti-Virus (Now McAfee)
  (VP Operations & Customer Service North America, Global Head of Product Management, Product Manager Dr Solomon's Anti-Virus Toolkit, Manager R&D, Technical Support Manager)

Internet Industry Association: David is serving a third term as a Director and Member of the Board at the Internet Industry Association (IIA) which lobbies for the internet industry and operates task forces dealing with copyright, privacy, security and policy issues. He's been actively involved in task forces working on the National Anti-Spam Initiative, National Authentication Initiative.

XMPP Standards Foundation: David was voted onto the board of the XMPP Standards Foundation in 2008. The XMPP Standards Foundation (formerly the Jabber Software Foundation) is an independent, nonprofit standards development organization whose primary mission is to define open protocols for presence, instant messaging, and real-time communication and collaboration on top of the IETF's Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol (XMPP).

He was co-author of CipherIM, architect for the security functionality and designing the client side GUI. David wrote the forward for the Syngress book 'Configuring Symantec AntiVirus, Corporate Edition' (ISBN 1-931836-81-7) in 2003.

You can find more about David at http://www.linkedin.com/in/dbanes

Louise Birch, Co-Owner & Director of Operations (Sydney)

Running Cleartext back office and sales support functions Louise has significant experience in a managed services business having spent several years with a vendor in this market as EA to the APAC Vice President, Sales Operations Support, Office Manager at MessageLabs.

Louise is a professional teacher (UK Degree, Honours) and has in depth experience in IT businesses whilst at Cool Bananas Ventures ranging from accounts management, HTML markup using Notepad to Web 2.0 content management systems as Director of Operations & Finance and Web Content Developer.

Brendan Fitzsimons, Consultant, (Brisbane)

Based in Byron Bay and leads Cleartext business development in Brisbane, Gold Coast and northern NSW.

Brendan has held senior commercial roles in a number of Internet based technology companies and has a broad range of business experience. He particularly enjoys evangelising the benefits of emerging technology and implementing those benefits in commercial environments.

Brendan’s most recent prior roles include:

• TM Publicity – Director of one of Australia’s most respected Film and Television PR agencies
• Engage Australia - GM and VP Software Asia
• DoubleClick – MD
• www.consult – Dir Media & Advertising
• Fairfax Media – Electronic Publishing Manager

You can find more about Brendan at http://www.linkedin.com/in/brendanfitzsimons

Tamir Levin, Adviser and Consultant, (Melbourne)

Tamir is a senior technology executive with extensive and diverse international experience. He has an in-depth and hands-on knowledge of technology & strategy, enterprise systems and their life cycle, collaboration, social media, web 2.0 and how to maximize them for commercial gain across multiple industries.

From helping market leaders looking to innovate and understand Web 2.0 and the new digital world to assisting companies in creating the next big thing in technology, Tamir helps discover, analyze, evangelize, and ultimately make great ideas - a reality.

Before joining forces with Cleartext as an adviser and consultant, Tamir relocated with his family from Silicon Valley, California to Melbourne to join Lonely Planet Publications as Global Technology Manager (CTO).

Prior to Lonely Planet, and over a decade, Tamir was the CIO of Organic - an award winning Digital agency based in San Francisco and the VP of Technology at SPL WorldGroup – the world’s leading provider of billing and customer care solutions for the global energy markets.

You can find out more about him and his past roles at http://www.linkedin.com/in/tamirlevin