Co-founder Brent Frei leaving CEO post Onyx Software Corp. announced Monday that co-founder Brent Frei will leave his position as chief executive officer (CEO) of the company and they have begun to seek a replacement.Frei, 37, co-founded Onyx, a world-wide supplier of customer relationship management (CRM) software serving over 1,000 companies, in 1994. Onyx was one of the first companies to offer true Internet architecture“Brent has a technical background. He believes that the time is right to bring a CEO on board who has more of a sales and marketing distribution in their make-up and can look to inject that in Onyx. Brent now wants to bring a great selling aspect,” Ben Kiker, senior vice president and chief marketing officer at Onyx, said. The Onyx board of directors, including Frei, has started to look for an individual to fill the role. The company has hired the executive recruiting firm Christian & Timbers to assist them in the task. Frei will remain CEO and chairman of the board until a new CEO is appointed, according to a statement from the company.In November Onyx made an unsolicited bid to acquire CRM (customer relationship management) software producer Pivotal Corp., but it was rejected. Instead, Hong-Kong based CDC Software Corp. successfully purchased Pivotal. Frei’s decision to leave the role of CEO does not relate to these events, said Kiker.Kiker said that he believes Frei would like to remain involved in Onyx, but Frei “also realizes that the way that he remains in the company is going to be very much dependent on the new CEO that we hire and what the individual would like for Brent to do.” DatabasesSoftware DevelopmentTechnology Industry