eZ Systems Names Former IBM Exec as CEO
by Lisa Hoover - Nov. 05, 2009Comments (2)
Open source content management software vendor eZ Systems put former IBM executive Christoph Rau at the helm today as the company's new CEO. He's replacing co-founder Aleksander Farstad, who will become chief business development officer.
Farstad says the move is the next logical step following 10 years of sustained growth in the open source industry. "For the first 10 years of eZ, we grew successfully by focusing on our unique commercial open source business model," says Farstad. "Our value came from our focus on how we did things better. Now, as the commercial open source business model has matured and is well established, we will focus on what we do better than any other competitor: help businesses manage and publish any type of information, created and managed by anyone and published through any digital channel.“
Rau's pedigreed background should serve him well in his new role. He held several different positions at IBM, including international management positions in both sales and software development. He also served as general manager of the IBM Printing Systems Division for the entire EMEA region. Rau left IBM to take a VP job at BEA Systems, and was named CEO of Parsytec AG in 2006. All told, Rau brings 25 years of management experience to the table.
One of Rau's goals as CEO is to continue to offer open source content management solutions to customers. "We will build from our strengths and make eZ the preferred choice for customers that need to manage different types of digital and multimedia content from different sources," he says. "And, eZ is the ideal choice for people who wish to publish in different channels, including web, mobile and print. We simply manage any content from any source to any user and device. At the same time, we will keep our technology as open as possible in order to make integration through open standards like CMIS (Content Management Interoperability Services) very simple."
