Spin-out company announced

Australia’s Information and Communications Technology (ICT) Research Centre of Excellence, NICTA, has spun out its fourth technology company in less than six years of operation, following the founding of network monitoring company, Monitoring Division.

Monitoring Division will be headquartered in the US and its Australian subsidiary, the research arm, will have an office in Melbourne.

The company arose from the Managing and Monitoring the Internet (MAMI) Project, which was based out of NICTA’s Victoria Research Laboratory. The MAMI Project developed technologies for measuring the performance of the internet at both the physical transport and protocol layers.

The company will kick off its business with one commercial licence agreement already under its belt.

NICTA signed its first technology licence agreement exploiting research in the MAMI Project in December with Optium, a leading supplier of high-performance optical subsystems.

The commercial licence agreement was for a new-generation optical signal-to-noise ratio (OSNR) monitoring technology that is compatible with next-generation high-speed optical networks.

Monitoring Division chief executive officer, David Wright, anticipates by the end of the year over 20 staff will be employed by the start-up. It is in discussions with a substantial number of telecommunications carriers and network equipment manufacturers.