Audio over IP company Barix has promoted Reto Brader to CEO, following a successful tenure as vice president of sales and marketing. The change in company leadership correlates with the availability of new products that Barix introduced in 2018, including its RetailPlayer platform for background music distribution.
The remaining Barix management team, which has worked together effectively for the past several years, will continue in their established roles with full support from Brader. This includes company founder Johannes Rietschel as CTO, Joan Parrilla as VP engineering, and Mario Almeida as VP production. Rietschel founded Barix in 2001 upon anticipating the need to move audio and control signals over IP networks. The company has since shipped more than 450,000 Barix and private-labeled OEM hardware devices worldwide, and has more recently evolved into SaaS and managed services for business music and advertising distribution for retail, hospitality, and other location-based businesses.
Barix has invested heavily in the development of its next-generation products that follow the latest IoT architecture, and that support the highest internet security standards. With Rietschel behind product development and Brader driving marketing strategy, 2018 also saw the introduction of the IPAM 400, a quad-core Linux-based IP audio module for OEMs and developers; Instreamer ICE, Barix’s first AAC+ encoder with an integrated Icecast server; and AudioPoint 3.0, Barix’s low-latency audio-to-mobile streaming platform.
Effective immediately, the Barix board has appointed Brader as CEO to seize the market opportunities afforded through these innovations. Before joining Barix as VP sales and marketing, Brader held key business and technical roles at Hewlett Packard, Pixelmetrix, Utah Scientific. and Alcatel. He has a degree in electronical engineering and an MBA.
“Reto knows the market and has demonstrated his strength in building and managing the distribution channel and key customer relationships,” said Rietschel. “His many years at the frontline in the worldwide AV and broadcast markets are key assets to Barix.”
In recent years, Barix has built up an agile organization that can support both small businesses and enterprise-level customers for a wide area of audio and control over IP applications. Recent company milestones include ISO 9001 certification for quality management systems, and the introduction of double-sourcing with a new manufacturing partner in Europe. The latter adds redundancy to the company’s global supply chain.
“It is now important that the entire company is focused on leveraging first market success of our new products to build on recent successes, and continue to drive global business growth,” Brader said.
Barix headquarters in Zurich remains the hub for further product development, marketing, and support for its product line. “A key area of our business is to help customers integrate our modules and solutions into their system,” Rietschel said. “This is very support intensive, and we are proud to be recognized for excellence in that area.”
While Barix will continue to focus on its core markets, Rietschel and Brader’s leadership positions will play a central role in moving Barix forward into new areas of opportunity for IP audio and control solutions. Departing CEO Ivo Killer will leave Barix following a three-year tenure that laid the business foundation for Barix’s recent success.
“We thank Ivo for his years of excellent service and wish him well in his future endeavors,” Rietschel said. “I’m excited about what we have achieved in the last three years, and I look forward to working closely with the new executive team in order to bring all our new and exciting innovations to market, as well as to better serve our global systems integration, end user and OEM customer base.”
