IP audio and control pioneer Barix this month celebrates its 20th anniversary. Over two decades, the Swiss company has grown from a control and automation upstart into a globally recognised Audio over IP innovator primarily serving the professional AV, broadcast and security industries, while supporting a variety of vertical markets within each. Barix has shipped nearly one million devices to serve control, streaming and transport applications for end-users, OEM vendors, service providers and systems integrators.
Current CTO Johannes G. Rietschel founded Barix in 2001 to escape the trappings of corporate operations that slowed his product development ideas, which evolved from standard legacy network components to IT-focused control products by the turn of the century. “I had spent too much time traveling to tradeshows doing ‘research’ with little to show beyond expense reports,” he said. “My vision was to build a product that would fit the market and adapt to customer requests from there, instead of overthinking. That’s the premise on which Barix was founded.”