Barix has welcomed back its company founder Johannes Rietschel to the role of CTO as part of wider executive level changes.
Rietschel, who founded Barix in 2001, has appointed Ivo Killer as Barix CEO after Frank Frederiksen left the position at the end of August 2016. Killer also serves as COO of Barix’s sister company, Qibixx.
Rietshel said: “We thank Frank for his years of excellent service and wish him well in his future endeavours. I’m excited to return to Barix, working closely with the greater executive team and the growing Barix staff to bring new and exciting innovations to market, and better serve our global systems integration, end user and OEM customer base.
“Ivo has clearly demonstrated his strength in managing people and organisations, which dates to executive HR positions in the financial services space as well as in the telecom industry, since coming to Qibixx. These strengths and his early success at Qibixx prove that he has the vision to lead and continue moving Barix forward.”
Barix recently closed its German office and moved its customer support, engineering and inside sales staff to Zurich. These resources will work closely with existing Qibixx teams on business and product development initiatives moving forward.
Killer said: “Qibixx, being the main hardware supplier to TWINT, the Swiss mobile payment system, uses the most modern technologies including IPv6, Bluetooth LE and RFID to develop highly innovative mobile, wireless and beacon solutions for large projects.
“While Barix will remain an independent, separate entity, we fully intend to leverage the forward-looking technology innovations and engineering resources of Qibixx to move Barix’s traditional and emerging businesses into the next phase. This includes new product launches and enhancements for audio contribution and distribution in broadcast radio, location-based music and advertising delivery, paging and intercom, and control and automation.”
Joan Parilla was also promoted to VP of engineering after serving as product manager for SoundScape since its initial development and launch in 2013. Reto Brader, who joined Barix in 2015 as VP of sales, will expand his role to VP of sales and marketing.