Communications Day Australia
8th November, 2010 - Australian IP telephony technology developed by M5 Networks Australia in Canberra was a key reason behind the decision to merge the hosted VoIP businesses of M5 and Chicago-based Gechotech in the US.
M5 Australia MD Matthew Wilson told CommsDay that M5 was now the largest provider of hosted VoIP in the Mid West of America and described it as a “ringing endorsement” of the development capability of the Australian team.
“It's an amazing step forward and they didn't need to go with us,” he said, noting that a key reason behind the merger was that Geckotech needed to overhaul its technology platform. M5 Networks will now take over Geckotech’s operations and customers.
M5 Networks Australia started in 2003, when it obtained the rights to technology from US-based M5. The two companies now operate as “sister companies”, with the Australian team providing much of the research and development for both companies.
R&D is done out of Canberra, where according to Wilson the largest pool of software developer talent resides, in part because of the resources that come out of ANU and the Federal Government.
As well as US growth, Wilson said the Australian market was robust and had been growing on average 3% per month for the company in the past year. As a result it has added another 12 R&D and engineering staff to meet demand.
He also noted that the team was preparing for the next phase of development of the platform, particularly the way it integrates with other systems.
“The blue sky for this market is the way that VoIP systems can integrate with other systems, so we're adding hooks for a wide range of messaging systems and CRM systems as well things like call centre functionality and features like call recording, which is quite difficult in a hosted environment,” he said.
He also noted that the business market in Australia now had a better understanding of the technology that in years past, making it no longer necessary to explain the concept of IP telephony.
-Geoff Long