Vancouver based Convedia has been purchased by RadiSys of the US for a reported $105 million. Convedia's CMS Media Server products captured about 50% of the growing market for mobile media servers. The purchase price was for 5 times Convedia's annual revenue.

The Hamilton Spectator has a story on the company's CEO, Grant Henderson. It is worth a read because it shows that success - especially in Canada's struggling tech market - is often the result of numerous attempts and failures.

Bell sent him to Ottawa to work at Canada Telecom. But Henderson grew tired of life at a large corporation and took a job as manager of the University of Ottawa's Multimedia Research Lab. It was there that Henderson conducted the first Canadian experiments on Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM), a network protocol that preceded the now widespread Internet protocol (IP). It was also at the University of Ottawa that Henderson met Peter Briscoe, a manager at Ottawa's Newbridge Networks who later become Henderson's partner at Convedia.

Henderson eventually joined Briscoe at Newbridge, then moved to B.C. to work on Briscoe's now defunct start up called Starvision in 1995. Convedia was born in 2000.

"Starvision had its day," Briscoe said. "We learned a lot from it, but really the IP protocol was it. Grant's been a key person in getting Convedia to where it is now."