Avaya bought the company forthwith and promised to release a product based on the Nimcat technology within a year. Enter Avaya One-X/Quick edition.
Word on the street however is that before September 19th 2005 Siemens had struck a deal for Nimcat to produce a system for them.
Enter Siemens BizIP, launched this month and being previewed at the Convergence Summit by distributor MTV Telecom alongside… You guessed it, Avaya Quick Edition!
MTV Telecom Chairman Martin Hatcher told Comms Business Magazine, “Your summation of the situation is absolutely correct as far as we know. The technology is identical but the plastics are different. One of the more bizarre aspects however is the fact that the Siemens BizIP version comes with a BRI interface on day one but will only become available on the Avaya product in Q2 2007. You explain that to me.”
Martin Northend, Global Director of Small Medium Enterprise Marketing at Siemens, talking exclusively to Comms Business Magazine commented;
“There’s an element of truth in what you say and an element that is not true. Yes, Siemens was doing some joint development work with Nimcat on peer to peer technology but we decided not to bring the Nimcat product to market ourselves and developed our own in house version of the peer to peer technology instead. Avaya has not asked for any code back. I guess the fruits of the work we did with Nimcat is in the product in terms of experience gained during our relationship with Nimcat but BizIP is a 100% Siemens technology product.”
Martin Hatcher at MTV Telecom was however ebullient on the channel prospects for both products; “Avaya and Siemens have both recognised the benefits that this type of technology can offer the user and produced easy to install systems for the channel to sell at attractive price points. Both will do extremely well in the channel.”