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Executive Team
Knowledge, Experience, Dedication
With deep knowledge and experience in the telecommunications, public safety, homeland security, defense, aerospace and command and control industries, SolaCom's management team understands the technology, trends, and market forces that influence their customer needs.
Franz Plangger
Chief Executive Officer and President
Franz Plangger is the founder of SolaCom Technologies. Before founding SolaCom, he co-founded CML Technologies in 1982. At CML, he was responsible for the design and development of all CML products. In 1989, Franz Plangger took over entire responsibility for the running of CML Technologies Inc. During his career as President at CML, Mr. Plangger was instrumental in winning and successfully delivering several multi-million dollar contracts to Transport Canada, Illinois State Toll Highway Authority, City of Chicago and many others. During this period, revenue figures for CML grew from $3.8 million to nearly $25 million in 1999. Under his leadership, the company was awarded some very prestigious awards such as The 50 Best Managed Private Companies by Arthur Andersen Group and the Canada Awards for Business Excellence and the Mercuriad award by the Quebec Chamber of Commerce.
Mr. Plangger obtained his Bachelor of Electrical Engineering degree, with High Distinction, in 1975 from Carleton University, Ottawa, Ontario. He was awarded a National Research Council of Canada Scholarship to continue his engineering studies toward a Master's of Electrical Engineering degree, obtained in 1978.
Jocelyn Racine
Senior Vice President, Finance & Administration
Jocelyn Racine joined SolaCom in September 1999 as Director of Finance and Administration. Mr. Racine is a Certified Management Accountant with 16 years of experience and 10 years experience in senior positions. Prior to joining SolaCom, Mr. Racine was Vice-President of Finance for Le Groupe Brigil Construction and Manager at KPMG, Chartered Accountants.
Sivakumar Chandrasekaran
Vice President, i3 Business Unit
Before joining SolaCom in 2006, Siva Chandrasekaran was Chief Business/Solution Strategist at Alcatel, responsible for defense communication and homeland security . Prior to that assignment, he was Senior Program/Design Manager for Alcatel's ATM/IP Path Management products. Before joining Alcatel, Siva worked at General Dynamics Canada (GDC) as RSAOC ICS project lead and Chief System Architect . He holds a Masters in Engineering and a Masters in Business Administration, both from the University of Saskatchewan.
Ray Vilis
Vice President, iTEL Business Unit
Ray Vilis brings 30 years of telecommunications industry experience in product management, product development, and system engineering, over the the past six years, focusing on the definition and introduction of new VoIP services. Mr. Vilis developed his expertise at Bell Northern Research and Nortel, where he established a proven track record in the delivery of large, profitable, multi-year product development projects including traditional PSTN voice and turnkey IP solutions (Magellan Passport), automated speech recognition technology and data network solutions. His experience managing teams from 20 to 250 individuals over three continents includes several joint venture activities between Nortel Networks and key technology organizations.
Rich Birckbichler
Vice President, Sales – C4ISR and Security
Rich Birckbichler brings over 30 years of telecommunications industry experience in sales, marketing, business development, engineering, technical development and operations with Alcatel, DCS Communications, Texas Instruments, Sprint and Centel Corporation. Mr. Birckbichler developed his domestic and international Government, Telecom and Enterprise sales expertise through executive roles as VP Sales and Business Development with a $300 Million revenue responsibility at Alcatel, President of Sprint VideoPath, and VP Centel Carrier Services and Technical Development. Mr. Birckbichler has a strong background in establishing partnerships with systems integrators, distributors and VAR’s to attain solution requirements.
Tony Parrott
Vice President, Sales – Public Safety
Tony Parrott brings over 20 years of experience in Telecommunications and Public Safety/E9-1-1 joining SolaCom in February 2009 as VP Sales for Public Safety. Prior to joining SolaCom, Tony worked at PlantCML where he was Area Sales Manager for public safety products in the South Central and South Eastern United States. In the last two years alone, Tony oversaw sales of public safety products topping $54 million. Prior to PlantCML, Mr. Parrott was the VP of Sales and Marketing for microDATA 9-1-1 for fours years, VP of Sales and at CML Emergency Services for seven years. Earlier in his career, Tony held sales and sales management positions at Verizon.
Tony has served on various E9-1-1 Boards and Committees, is a member of both the Public-Safety Communication Officers (APCO) and the National Emergency Number Association (NENA) and has been accredited as an Emergency Number Professional (ENP) from NENA.
Daniel Biagé
Vice President, Research & Development
As Vice President of Research & Development (R&D) of SolaCom, Daniel Biagé is responsible for the for the design, development and quality assurance activities for all product lines. This includes the SolaCom Guardian®, LibertySHIELD®, LibertyCOMMAND®, selective router as well as fully integrated third-party applications. He is also the author/co-author of several patents in Mission Critical communications, Telecommunications and Public Safety/E9-1-1.
He possesses 25+ years of R&D industry-renowned experience with extensive knowledge in Ethernet, IP, SIP, ATM, DSL, radio dispatch and call processing. Prior to joining SolaCom, Daniel held VP of R&D roles at Versatel Networks Inc for 8 years and CML Technologies for 14 years where he was responsible for design and development of their technologies. He holds a B.S.C. in Engineering from the University of Sherbrooke.
Leo Williams
Director, Operations
Leo Williams joined SolaCom in 2008 after over 25 years experience in project management and systems engineering in aerospace, military electronics and automotive sectors. At MDA Space he managed projects for communication satellite subsystems. He has led development teams on aircraft, armoured vehicles, naval vessels and simulators for CAE, Lockheed Martin, Rheinmetall and MMIST. At Array Systems, he forayed briefly into the earliest prototypes of VOIP Gateways. At SolaCom, he has managed over a dozen major projects. Mr. Williams is a PMI-certified Project Management Professional and holds a B.Sc. (physics).
SolaCom's Executive Team can count on employees with lots of skills and talents, combined with an attitude focused on customer satisfaction. Together we make it our mission to listen to, and act upon, our customer needs.
