Acquia Appoints Christian Hartigan to Lead Higher Education Business

BURLINGTON, MA--(Marketwired - May 16, 2013) - Acquia, where great digital experiences begin, today announced the appointment of Christian Hartigan as general manager of Acquia's higher education business. Hartigan will lead the organization's sales and go-to-market initiatives within the higher education segment.

"It's a privilege to lead Acquia's higher education business and help bring the scale, speed and innovation of open source Drupal and the Acquia Cloud to university websites," Hartigan said. "We're helping drive next-generation web, mobile and social experiences that support recruitment, learning, and community for colleges and universities around the world."

Hartigan will host a Higher Education MeetUp during DrupalCon Portland 2013 on Wednesday, May 22. He'll also co-present on a June 6 Acquia webinar titled The Practical Guide to Selecting a Web CMS for Higher Education.

Acquia has extensive expertise delivering innovative web solutions based on open source Drupal to the higher education market. Colleges and universities are among Acquia's largest market segments, as the company provides cloud solutions and development tools for more than 350 institutions and learning organizations worldwide. With Acquia, institutions can manage hundreds of websites and satisfy rising demand from candidates, students, faculty, staff, and administration with an enterprise-class digital platform that's optimized for high performance. Babson College, Harvard University, The Pennsylvania State University, Princeton University, Roger Williams University, Stanford University, Singapore Management University and the University of Texas are among Acquia's clients in higher education.

"Competition among colleges and universities begins and often ends online; schools rely on their digital platforms to engage a variety of audiences and solve their challenges related to recruiting and retaining students, driving development efforts and building affinity with their constituents," said Tom Erickson, Acquia CEO. "Chris' experience serving the higher education marketplace will be a strong asset to Acquia clients that need to advance their digital strategies."

Drupal is the dominant content management system in higher education. According to Acquia's research, an estimated 26 percent of all .edu sites are built on Drupal, as colleges and universities benefit from Drupal's significant advantages. Acquia provides products and solutions for Drupal to support large-scale, multi-site deployments, increased site security and uptime, better reliability and scalability, lower total cost of ownership, integration with authorization systems, and strong content relation capabilities.

Hartigan joins Acquia from Jenzabar, where he was vice president and general manager. His 11-year tenure was focused exclusively on the higher education market. Hartigan's prior experience includes corporate and investment banking in New York and Switzerland, and three years in business development and financial services for technology providers serving the higher education and corporate learning markets. A graduate of St. Michael's College, Hartigan earned a master's degree in business administration from the University of Michigan.

About Acquia

Acquia is where great digital experiences begin. Acquia is helping some of the world's leading brands succeed, including Twitter, Mercedes Benz, Warner Music Group, and Stanford University. Join the more than 2,000 organizations that are moving at the speed of the web with Acquia's solutions for content, community and commerce. Acquia offers developer tools, cloud solutions and global expertise to drive success the open source way.

Dream It. Drupal It. Acquia.

See who's using Drupal at http://www.drupalshowcase.com, and for more information visit www.acquia.com or call +1 781 238 8600.

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