Bloomington, IL (September 3) - Gaggle announced today that it has created a new division called Authority, which will focus on the company’s expansion into new markets. Authority will provide cloud-based products to government, higher education and commercial customers.

“Our experience working with school districts provides us a great opportunity to offer cost-effective solutions to organizations that lack a lot of technical resources,” said Gaggle CEO and founder Jeff Patterson. “That same experience has allowed us to speak with ‘authority’ regarding cloud-based solutions, including archiving and backup services, website hosting and more.”

Patterson will serve as the CEO of both Gaggle and Authority. A key leadership change includes naming Tom Petit, who served as Vice President of Sales at Gaggle for the past five years, to the same position at Authority. Petit is a former attorney and has held sales management positions with BearingPoint and JobDirect.com. Chris Wheedleton replaces Petit as Vice President of Sales at Gaggle. Wheedleton was most recently Senior Vice President, Strategic Partnerships, at Educate Online and EdisonLearning.

While GaggleMail.com now redirects to Authority3.com, existing archiving customers can login to the new Authority website the same way they have in the past. Existing archiving customers will be migrated to a new Authority application within the next couple of months.

The foundation of Authority is built on three important value propositions that are offered to every Gaggle and Authority archiving customer.

• Security You Expect
  Unmatched data security best practices to help you manage risk and meet compliance requirements.
• Simplicity You Need
  A simple pricing structure and web-based interface that allows end-user access, freeing up your IT department from the burden of recovering missing or deleted content and messages.
• Service You Deserve
  A rare combination of low-cost solutions and a high level of service offered to every customer.

“Authority gives us the ability to help new customers leverage the efficiencies that we’ve developed over the past 15 years working with school districts,” said Petit. “We understand security because we’ve been dealing with student data for quite a long time. We’re also able to provide a simple, easy-to-understand pricing structure and user experience, and, because not all users are tech-savvy, we provide a high level of customer service that they deserve.”

To learn more about Authority, visit authority3.com, email tom@authority3.com, or call 855-298-5200.