Another day, another VOIP start-up snapped up. This time it's Nimcat Networks,
which was bought by Avaya for C$46 million. Ottawa-based Nimcat makes
P2P communications software that puts networking intelligence in VOIP phones. This lets businesses launch new features without
having to buy expensive call processing and application servers. Since Nimcat was created three years ago, it has raised about C$9 million in private equity from investors such
as Siemens Venture Capital, Skypoint, Innovatech, Broadcom and
the Business Development Bank of Canada.
CIBC analyst Steve Kamman said if Avaya is successful with
Nimcat, "this potentially disruptive new technology could impactSMB-focused Inter-Tel, Avaya rival Nortel, and Cisco". Tom Tehrani adds Nimcat's purchase leaves Popular Telephony's Peerio as the last man standing in the P2P IP PBX market, while Alec Saunders is looking for Skype to launch new services aimed at the SMB market.