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Gandalf - Data Switching CompanyGandalf was one of the original high tech companies in the Ottawa area. It was founded in 1971 and started business from the lobby of the Four Seasons Hotel on Albert Street in Ottawa. It was quickly successful and became famous for its long and short range modems. The name Gandalf became synonymous with modem in the Soviet Union and a few other countries. Later, Gandalf created a number of centralized data switches which it called the PACX (private automatic computer exchange) in analogy to the telephony PABX which provided similar services in the voice field. The company failed and went bankrupt in 1999 because its PACX technology could not compete with LANs especially Ethernet. The PACX suited the needs of a mainframe computer environment and could not compete in a market with the widespread deployment of desktop and client/server computing. Gandalf, with weak management, could not produce the required technological change although it internally created and abandoned advanced and innovative technology for the emerging market. Instead it turned its hand to ISDN-based data products such as ISDN teleworker solutions, which predictably failed. Some of the advanced technology that Gandalf abandoned was picked up and utilized for great profit by companies such as Newbridge Networks with no return to Gandalf shareholders. Gandalf products were regarded as pricey and technologically stale. Management could not solve this problem and was more interested in propping up and inflating the share price with short-term measures. These measures worked temporarily with the share price rising from the one dollar range to over twenty-seven dollars. Eventually short-term thinking caused the company to fail in the market place as no new profitable products were produced and the shares became worthless. The assets of the bankrupt company were purchased by Mitel. Mitel used Gandalf data technology and employee expertise to move its PABX division into the VoIP market. Mitel tried to keep some Gandalf data products in the market for a short time. However, because of very poor sales, it dropped support for these products and Gandalf faded from existence not with a bang but with a whimper. The impressive new Gandalf headquarters building at 130 Colonnade Road in Nepean, South of Ottawa was taken over by Nortel. When the fortunes of Nortel took a bad turn the building came into the hands of the Government of Canada, which used it for Health Canada, and later for the Public Health Agency of Canada, when it was born in 2004.
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