TMCnet's Asterisk Week in Review

We wish all a merry Christmas and a blessed holiday season, and let’s wrap up what news there was of interest to the Asterisk (News - Alert) community this past week.

TMC’s Peter Bernstein wrote that Canadian-based Sangoma Technologies (News - Alert) Corporation, a leading provider of hardware and software components that enable or enhance IP communications systems, has announced its intention to make a normal course issuer bid.

For those unfamiliar, this action which is subject to regulatory approval is done when a company decides that instead of holding shares, which fluctuate day-to-day, it buys back the shares on the open market to increase its core value. The announcement says that pursuant to the terms of the bid, Sangoma may purchase its own common shares for cancellation through the facilities of the Toronto Venture Exchange (TSXV) at the prevailing market price of the common shares.

Details include that the number of common shares purchased will in not exceed 5 percent of the issued and outstanding common shares at the date the bid commences, being 1,491,890 common shares of the 29,837,809 currently issued and outstanding common shares.

Also Emptoris, a provider of strategic supply and enterprise contract management solutions, announced its Rivermine Telecom Expense Management (TEM) product received Internet Telephony (News - Alert) magazine's 2011 TEM Excellence Award for the third year in a row.

“We are honored to be acknowledged by Internet Telephony for the third consecutive year for delivering outstanding telecom expense management solutions,” said Mark Logan, COO of Emptoris. “The Rivermine (News - Alert) solution has a proven track record of delivering millions of dollars in savings to our customers through proactive management of their wireline and mobile telecom spend.”

Providing enterprises greater visibility into, and control over, all aspects of the telecom lifecycle, Rivermine automates procurement and order management, invoice processing and auditing, inventory management, dispute management and reporting/analytics for both fixed and mobile spend.

And TMC’s Susan J. Campbell reported that the first quarter of 2012, ended Sept. 30, 2011, provided a positive outlook for IP telephony solutions provider, Sangoma Technologies Corporation. The company announced the highlights of this unaudited timeframe, highlighting a 20 percent increase in sales from the same time period the year before.

“This is a very positive sign,” said Bill Wignall, president and CEO of Sangoma, in a statement. “Delivering year over year growth of 20 percent is really excellent for our industry, especially during these extremely uncertain economic times. We believe that our new focus on growth, new corporate strategy, new product portfolio and new management team is beginning to bear fruit. The reaction of our customers, as well as our OEM and distribution partners around the world, to these changes is quite promising.”

With the 20 percent increase for this quarter, the IP PBX (News - Alert) component company returned a promising $3.01 million in sales for the first quarter of fiscal 2012. Gross margins were reported at $2.19 million for the quarter, representing approximately 73 percent of revenue, in line with margins reported in the first quarter of fiscal 2011.

David Sims is a contributing editor for TMCnet. To read more of David’s articles, please visit his columnist page. He also blogs for TMCnet here.