ICE recruits Govinda Fichtner as CTO

ICE recruits Govinda Fichtner as CTO

ICE, the world’s first integrated processing hub, is excited to announce that Govinda Fichtner will join as CTO (Chief Technology Officer). He joins ICE from IONOS, a leading web hosting and Cloud provider in Europe. 
Govinda will lead the innovation driving the copyright and online processing systems of the future, ensuring ICE continues to pioneer solutions which grasp the opportunities of data for its CMO and Publisher customers and deliver value for their songwriters.

Having already distributed more than €2.3bn to rightsholders, ICE is uniquely positioned to take these next steps from its current platform of large-scale, real-world success.

In his most recent role at IONOS, Govinda, as VP Cloud Technology, was responsible for growing and building the "European Cloud Hyperscaler Alternative" by developing and operating a product portfolio with dozens of large-scale development projects in a fast-growing tech organisation distributed over multiple countries.

From the start I was attracted to this unique opportunity to help evolve ICE for the future. A key part of this exciting mission is the strategic capability to work efficiently with huge amounts of data – be it copyright or DSP usage. Clearly, the best IT foundation to support a scalable 24/7 system has a cloud-based infrastructure. With over 15 years’ experience in building cloud-based solutions, I am really looking forward to applying this experience to create a very strong technology foundation for the future of ICE.

We are incredibly pleased that Govinda Fichtner is joining ICE as its new CTO. As the volume of data ICE processes increases exponentially, and it continues to grow as a data and tech company, it is vital that their team is completely focussed on creating innovative global opportunities around big data. Govinda’s in-depth experience of Cloud technology will ensure that ICE can provide pioneering global copyright solutions and offer a best-in-class service for its customers, which will ultimately benefit songwriters, composers and publishers around the world.

 

Finding the right CTO for an organisation like ICE, is a strategic appointment since we match un-rivalled expertise in musical copyright to technology.
In a dynamic and fast-moving industry, we need to continue to deliver today whilst imagining and realising what tomorrow could look like.

I’m delighted to bring Govinda on-board as part of my leadership team. It’s by having a passionate team, who bring the skills and expertise to an already purpose-driven organisation, we can achieve unique things together.”

All-in-all, Govinda brings more than 23 years of experience in the IT industry to the role at ICE, having started his career as a software engineer in the media industry and having worked in different engineering-related roles for companies ranging from start-ups to large corporations like T-Systems, IBM and lately IONOS.

As an early adopter of Open Source, Agile Development and DevOps practices, Govinda understood the potential of cloud computing early on in 2006 and specialised in building sophisticated applications on top of cloud providers like AWS.

With this background he has built the AWS business for IBM Business Services in Germany, Switzerland and Austria as CTO AWS. There he was also responsible for supporting lighthouse customers with his expertise as Chief Architect building large-scale, distributed applications for example in the IoT space.

Govinda officially takes up his role in April 2022.

About ICE 

ICE offers a flexible suite of services for Publishers, Collective Management Organisations (CMOs) and Rightsholders. Services include; copyright administration, multi-territorial online licensing processing and licensing solutions with Digital Service Providers. ICE was created by PRS for Music, STIM and GEMA and represents over 333,000 rightsholders alone through this partnership. In addition the ICE Core includes repertoire of IMRO and the independent publishers Peermusic, Downtown/Songtrust and Concord. ICE has processed trillions of online music uses from music streaming services and paid over €1 billion back to rightsholders since March 2016. The ICE copyright database holds over 39 million musical works. ICE is based in the UK, Germany and Sweden.

About PRS for Music

Here for music since 1914, PRS for Music is a world-leading music collective management organisation representing the rights of more than 175,000 talented songwriters, composers and music publishers. Redefining the global standard for music royalties, PRS for Music ensures songwriters and composers are paid whenever their musical compositions and songs are streamed, downloaded, broadcast, performed and played in public. 

For 110 years it has grown and protected the rights of the music creator community, paying out royalties with more accuracy, transparency and speed. In 2023, PRS for Music paid out £943.6m in royalties and collected a record £1.08 billion in revenues. prsformusic.com