Not only do the two companies operate in the same field - communications - but they are also a part of the Wesley Clover empire of firms chaired by local serial entrepreneur Terry Matthews.
This means that Mr. Gallagher has access to Mitel's customers as a reseller, and can draw upon the company's experience when working on his nascent product.
Martello is not profitable yet, but it's growing with the help of this support and seed funding from Wesley Clover, Mr. Gallagher says.
Its website makes extensive mention of Mitel, saying that Martello's voice quality management, as well as its network performance fault monitoring and secure remote monitoring, will improve troubleshooting and employee productivity specifically for Mitel's resellers.
"Mitel is a big partner of ours and our first sales have been to the Mitel channel," says Mr. Gallagher, the former director of product management for the local tech anchor. "It's a big channel to the marketplace."
The company has seen success outside of Canada, with major deals coming from Australia and other business coming from the United Kingdom and Germany.
We can increase the value of the reseller’s service business by allowing it to be more responsive to their customer’s issues, and know the problem before the customer calls them. - Niall Gallagher, CEO and founder of Martello Technologies Corp.
Martello's differentiator, Mr. Gallagher says, is in offering open-source software-as-a-service, instead of a branded product such as those done by market players HP and IBM. This makes Martello's technology cheaper than the competition.
Mr. Gallagher sees almost infinite market opportunity for his product in the small business space, since these are companies that generally don't have the time or resources to manage their own network and voice-over-Internet-protocol systems.
"I saw a need, and the need was for a service that helped the small and medium enterprises and their resellers be more effective in how they offer their services. We offer an attractive ... service and then get it connected to all the customer networks, and then add value-added services."
Year founded: April 2009
Local head count: 14
Funding to date: Seed funding from Wesley Clover (undisclosed)
Product: Software-as-a-service network monitoring and remote access
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