eZ Systems announced that former IBM and BEA executive Christoph Rau will join the company as CEO, effective immediately.

Rau brings 25 years of management experience from the international IT and software industry, He takes over the CEO positon from co-founder Aleksander Farstad, who will become chief business development officer.

With innovative, leading-edge product design and a highly-competitive open source licensing model, eZ-Systems today provides a very attractive value proposition for customers and partners,” said Rau. “Our strong partner network and outstanding technology have made eZ the leading open source provider in the web content management space for the upper-mid and high-end market. Features like a flexible content engine and the clean separation of layout and content make eZ extremely powerful for multi-channel and multi-content delivery, for example in the Media industry, where eZ is very successful today.” 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," said Rau. "And, eZ is the ideal choice for people who wish to publish in different channels, including web, mobile and print. WeEN;">Content Management Interoperability Services) very simple."

The co-founder and former CEO Farstad, who will be the new chief business development officer, said that the decision to welcome Rau as a new CEO is a strategic decision for eZ Systems. "For the first 10 years of eZ, we grew successfully by focusing on our unique commercial open source business model," said 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, 54 years old, started his professional career with IBM in product development. At IBM he held numerous international management positions in software development and in sales. As IBM's vice president Software Group in EMEA Central Region from 1997 to 2002, he helped grow IBM's software business. He subsequently took over responsibility as general manager of the IBM Printing Systems Division for the entire EMEA region. Starting 2003 with BEA Systems as vice president Central and Eastern Europe, he succeeded in growing market share and achieving significant growth in Eastern Europe. In 2006, Rau became CEO of Parsytec AG and was successful in finding a new strategic investor for the company.

Rau holds an M.A. degree in Computer Science from the University of Bonn, Germany.