A well-known Ottawa tech executive is stepping down from his leadership role at a Kanata software firm.
Solace CEO Les Rechan is leaving the organization after nearly three years at the helm to take on “an executive role with a public company,” the firm said in a news release on Thursday. Denis King, who has been Solace’s chief operations officer for the past three years, will take over as chief executive.
Rechan is a familiar face to many in the capital’s tech community and beyond.
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The veteran executive came to Ottawa 14 years ago when he was hired as chief operating officer of one of Ottawa’s most successful tech companies, Cognos. He stayed on board after Cognos was acquired by IBM in 2007 and remained there until 2014.
He later spent two years as head of talent management solution provider Halogen Software before joining Solace in 2017. The Niagara Falls native, who worked in Europe, Asia and Silicon Valley before returning to Canada, is also an executive fellow at Ottawa-based VC firm Mistral Venture Partners.
“I’ve really had an opportunity throughout my career to work with some of the best people in high tech – people who have literally made the high-tech world happen,” Rechan told OBJ in a 2018 profile. “In that sense, I’ve been blessed.”
In a statement, Rechan praised King’s “passion, drive and commitment to customers,” adding the COO was “the driver” of Solace’s recent pivot from providing messaging and data-transfer software to making event streaming and management platforms.
King, a graduate of the University of New Brunswick, has spent nearly 17 years at Solace after joining the firm as a senior systems engineer in 2003. Before joining Solace, he had stints at IBM, Newbridge Networks and Alcatel.
