Dave Hattey (photo supplied)

SIPquest, a local VoIP software company, has renamed itself FirstHand Technologies and secured US$7 million in Series C funding.

"We now have our business plan fully funded, and this should carry us through to cash flow-break-even as a company," said David Hattey, president and CEO, adding that this will more than likely be their last funding round.

BDC Venture Capital led the funding round, with participation from existing investors Covington Capital and Skypoint Capital.

"We are very impressed with the FirstHand management team and their vision for enterprise mobility," said Roch Charbonneau, director of BDC Venture Capital. "Through its innovative product development FirstHand has the potential to become one of Canada's leading mobile software developers."

FirstHand said it would be using the Series C funding to accelerate market traction.

"We're already a couple years into execution, and we're getting some tremendous market traction which gives us the funding we need to continue that execution," Mr. Hattey continued.

"And the name change, we believe, better reflects our value brought to customers, and creates a brand not linked to a technology, but linked to that value to our customers."

Mr. Hattey said the company is now gearing up for a major trade show in Chicago scheduled for next month, as well as new rounds of hirings in the Ottawa area in the areas of product development, product line management, engineering and sales.

"We've been on a hiring spree for many months now," he said, "and we see that continuing into the foreseeable future."

FirstHand sells mobile client and server software through equipment vendors, systems integrators and service providers to extend communications services directly onto mobile phones.