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"Brooktrout" redirects here. For the species of fish, see Brook trout.
Brooktrout, Inc.
FormerlyBrooktrout Technology, Inc. (1984–1999)
Company typePublic
IndustryTelecommunications
Founded1984; 40 years ago (1984)
Founders
  • David Duehren
  • Eric Giler
  • Patrick Hynes
Defunct2005; 19 years ago (2005)
FateAcquired by EAS Group; folded into Cantata Technology, itself acquired by Dialogic Group in 2007
Number of employees
350 (2001, peak)

Brooktrout Technology, Inc., later Brooktrout, Inc., was an American telecommunications company based in Boston, Massachusetts, and active from 1984 to 2005. The company was initially focused on the development of hardware and software to allow personal computers to act as fax machines, similar to GammaLink's GammaFax. The company later developed fax server hardware for local area networks before ultimately pursuing Voice over IP and videoconferencing products. In 2005, the company was acquired by EAS Group, who merged Brooktrout with another company of theirs to form Cantata Technology. Cantata was in turn acquired by Dialogic Group in 2007.

Foundation (1984–1987)

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Brooktrout Technology was founded in 1984 in the Greater Boston area by David Duehren, Eric Giler, and Patrick Hynes, former employees of Teradyne, a maker of automatic test equipment also based in Massachusetts.[1]: 428 [2]: A6  All three were electrical engineers with experience in digital signal processing, gained both in university and on the job while working at Teradyne. Brooktrout struggled to gain venture capital for the first three years of their existence, owing to the founders' youth and what Giles deemed incredulity at the concept of "talk[ing] to machines".[1]: 439  Thus, the company was initially headquartered out of Hynes' sixteenth-floor apartment in Boston.[3] Giler, having the most pedigreed business education, was named president, while Duehren was named vice president of research and development, and Hynes was named vice president of engineering.[1]: 439  Hynes, an avid fisherman who was said to get his best ideas while fishing for trout, came up with Brooktrout's name.[3]

While Brooktrout had been eyeing the integration of fax capability in personal computers since its foundation, the company soft-launched with a family of expansion cards allowing PCs to receive voicemail and send phone messages.[1]: 439–440  In 1985, they launched their first fax-related product, Fax-Mail, which allowed PCs to send and receive fax documents through connection to a modem.[1]: 440 [4] Brooktrout's competitor GammaLink had pioneered this technology with GammaFax earlier in the year.[5] The product was met with consumer confusion and was quickly pulled from the market, Giler deeming it too cutting-edge. In 1987, the product was relaunched in Japan, where it was met with considerable more interest, the company reviving Fax-Mail globally soon afterward, to commercial success.[4] Brooktrout later expanded the Fax-Mail lineup to include models with more advanced features, the family as a whole ranging in prices between US$400 and $1,000 (in 1988).[2]: A6 

In 1987, Brooktrout received its first infusion of venture capital by Tie/Communications of Shelton, Connecticut—a major telephone equipment maker worth $250 million at the time. Tie gave Brooktrout $1 million in capital in exchange for a stake in the company, allowing Brooktrout to relocate its headquarters to dedicated offices in Wellesley Hills, Massachusetts.[1]: 439 [2]: A6  Between 1987 and 1989, the company was able to raise $1.5 million more in capital between 50 investment groups.[1]: 439  During this time, Brooktrout was hired by AT&T Corporation to be the OEM for elements of AT&T's Merlin PBX.[3][6]

Growth (1987–2000)

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While Brooktrout posted losses for its first five years, the company was on track to being profitable in fiscal year 1989.[1]: 428  That year, the company introduced its first product in their popular TR fax server product range.[4][7] Called the TR112, it was an expansion card featuring two twin-channel fax transceivers, allowing a fax server with eight such TR112es installed to handle sixteen separate fax connections, with each connection being able to send and receive faxes simultaneously. The transceivers support direct inward dialing, allowing users connected to the fax server to be issued their own fax phone number, negating the need for a DTMF-based auto attendant. A piggyback board attached to the TR112 allows each transceiver to digitize and store voice-path information from a connection, allowing the server to handle, for example, DTMF signals from incoming callers corresponding to a hotline interface.[8][9] Later in 1989, the company introduced the FlashFax, a turnkey fax server based on an IBM PC AT–compatible computer system and featuring a 20 MB hard drive and Brooktrout's TR-111M fax card and TR-100M3 speech digitization card. The FlashFax could serve and store up to 1,000 documents on request through a phone connection using a touch-tone keypad interface that the user could program via monitor and keyboard.[10][3] The FlashFax sold fairly well for Brooktrout, prompting the company to develop a slimmer model that could store twice as many documents.[3]

Brooktrout posted consistent growth from the turn of the 1990s through to the mid-1990s, posting profits from 1990 to at least 1995.[6] By the end of 1990, Brooktrout employed 40 people and brought in roughly $470,000 in profit.[3][11] A year later, the company netted $910,000 in profit.[11] The company soon counted such major clients as Sharp Corporation and the publishers of Consumer Reports, who used Brooktrout's hardware to devise an on-demand article reprinting service for paying subscribers.[11] As well, the popularity of Brooktrout's Fax-Mail line eclipsed that of GammaFax,[5] and by the mid-1990s, Brooktrout was one of the largest vendors of fax products in the United States.[7] In September 1992, Brooktrout filed to go public, issuing its initial public offering underwritten by Tucker Anthony.[12] Following their IPO, Brooktrout passed the $1-million profit mark.[11]

During the 1990s, Brooktrout acquired a number of companies in the telecommunications market to help expand their portfolio. In May 1993, Brooktrout acquired DAFCom Corporation of Dallas, Texas, for an undisclosed amount. The acquisition of DAFCom allowed Brooktrout to break into the market of IP-based fax machines, with a line of fax routers for corporate wide area networks (WANs).[6][13] In 1995, Brooktrout began selling fax servers specifically for local area networks under the TruFax name, this branding acting as a middle ground between their single-user fax boards and their WAN fax boards.[14] In May 1996, Brooktrout acquired Technically Speaking, Inc., a telecommunications software vendor of Southborough, Massachusetts, for an undisclosed amount.[15] In July 1997, Brooktrout purchased Netaccess, Inc., from Xircom of Thousand Oaks, California, allowing the company to enter the teleconferencing market with ISDN Primary Rate Interface cards.[16][17] In December 1998, Brooktrout acquired the entirety of Lucent Technologies' computer telephony division for $29.4 million. The acquisition of this division from Lucent allowed Brooktrout to greatly expand their range of Voice over IP and Fax over IP products,[18] segments in which the company had entered in the late 1990s.[19] Reflecting their diversifying business, Brooktrout dropped the "Technology" from their name in May 1999, thereafter trading as Brooktrout, Inc.[20]

Decline and acquisition (2000–2005)

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Following steady growth into the new millennium, revenue in Brooktrout dropped roughly 43 percent in the aftermath of the dot-com bubble burst of late 2000, prompting Brooktrout to freeze salaries and bonuses for top brass, to cancel trade shows, and to sell off their software division, Brooktrout Software, to eYak of Boston in 2001.[21][22] Despite the revenue drop, Brooktrout were able to avoid laying off any their 350 employees.[21] Sales slowly began recovering by 2004;[23] in May that year, the company acquired SnowShore Networks, a developer of softphone applications based in Chelmsford, Massachusetts, for $10 million.[24]

By 2005, Brooktrout employed 290 workers worldwide, 170 of which were based in the company's new headquarters of Needham, Massachusetts.[25] In August 2005, EAS Group, a telecommunications holding firm based in Hyannis, Massachusetts, announced the acquisition of Brooktrout for $173 million.[26] Immediately following the announcement of the acquisition, Giler resigned from the company. After the acquisition was finalized in the last quarter of 2005,[25] EAS merged their Excel Switching Corporation division with Brooktrout to form Cantata Technology.[27] In 2007, Cantata Technology was acquired by Dialogic Group of Parsippany, New Jersey.[5]

References

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  1. ^ a b c d e f g h Dess, Gregory G.; Alex Miller (1993). Strategic Management. McGraw-Hill. ISBN 0070165696 – via Google Books.
  2. ^ a b c Rosenberg, Ronald (June 12, 1988). "Fax: faster than a speeding Fed Ex truck". The Boston Globe: A1, A6.
  3. ^ a b c d e f Boyle, Mary Laura (December 23, 1990). "Getting more facts from the fax". The Boston Globe: 6 – via Newspapers.com.
  4. ^ a b c Gupta, Udayan (August 29, 1989). "Fax Machine Craze Sends A Message of Opportunity". The Wall Street Journal. Dow Jones & Company: 1 – via ProQuest.
  5. ^ a b c Grigonis, Richard (November 2007). "Dialogic and Cantata—Together Again for the First Time". Internet Telephony. Technology Marketing Corporation. Archived from the original on December 22, 2007.
  6. ^ a b c Crosariol, Beppi (May 23, 1995). "Reeling in profits from major surge in use of faxes". The Boston Globe: 54 – via Newspapers.com.
  7. ^ a b Fioravante, Janice (January 25, 1995). "Citing the Fax". Investor's Business Daily: A6 – via ProQuest.
  8. ^ Stephens, Mark (August 14, 1989). "Brooktrout Announces Twin-Channel Fax Card". InfoWorld. 11 (33). IDG Publications: 11 – via Google Books.
  9. ^ Smith, Tom (August 21, 1989). "New PC fax products make debut". Network World. 6 (33). IDG Publications: 27 – via Google Books.
  10. ^ Cohen, Alan (February 27, 1990). "FlashFax Fulfills Literature Requests via Fax". PC Magazine. 9 (4). Ziff-Davis: 59 – via Google Books.
  11. ^ a b c d Grillo, Thomas (January 24, 1993). "Building on matters of fax". The Boston Globe: 80 – via Newspapers.com.
  12. ^ "Brooktrout Technology Offering". The Wall Street Journal. Dow Jones & Company: B5. August 31, 1992 – via ProQuest.
  13. ^ "Brooktrout to acquire fax-routing start-up". Network World. 10 (20). IDG Publications: 29. May 17, 1983 – via Google Books.
  14. ^ Clarke, Michele (March 13, 1995). "Brooktrout to enter the LAN-fax market". Electronic Engineering Times. CMP Publications: 26 – via ProQuest.
  15. ^ "3-for-2 split raises Brooktrout Technology". The Boston Globe: 41. May 31, 1996 – via Newspapers.com.
  16. ^ "Bizwatch". Daily News. Los Angeles: B1. July 2, 1997 – via ProQuest.
  17. ^ "Netaccess Markets New ISDN Primary Rate Interface Card". ISDN News. 11 (6). Phillips Business Information: 1. March 24, 1998 – via ProQuest.
  18. ^ "Brooktrout buys Lucent division". The San Francisco Examiner: C-2. December 18, 1998 – via Newspapers.com.
  19. ^ Swanson, Stevenson (June 12, 1998). "New England regains high-tech edge". The Chicago Tribune: 14 – via Newspapers.com.
  20. ^ "Brooktrout Technology Change". The Wall Street Journal. Dow Jones & Company: C19. May 14, 1999 – via ProQuest.
  21. ^ a b Howe, Peter J. (May 21, 2002). "Telecom remains landscape of despair". The Boston Globe: E27 – via Newspapers.com.
  22. ^ "eYak acquires Brooktrout Software". Communications Convergence. 9 (6). Miller Freeman: 18. June 2001 – via ProQuest.
  23. ^ Howe, Peter J. (May 18, 2004). "Long-awaited turnaround still not a sure bet". The Boston Globe: F21 – via Newspapers.com.
  24. ^ Howe, Peter J. (March 26, 2004). "Brooktrout Buys Chelmsford Start-Up". The Boston Globe: D2 – via ProQuest.
  25. ^ a b Meade, Lauren K. (September 1, 2005). "Brooktrout Move Unclear". The Boston Globe: 2 – via ProQuest.
  26. ^ "EAS Group Agrees to Buy Firm in Deal Valued at $173 Million". The Wall Street Journal. Dow Jones & Company: A8. August 19, 2005 – via ProQuest.
  27. ^ "Rolling Meadows". Daily Herald. Arlington Heights, Illinois: 1. June 23, 2007 – via ProQuest.
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