Buzz continues for Commtech

THIS year’s WA Business News 40under40 1st Among Equals winner Nathan Buzza was all smiles at last week’s Western Australian Information Technology and Telecommunications Awards (WAIITA).

As the founder and chief executive officer of Commtech Wireless, Mr Buzza flew in to Perth from a five-week overseas business trip only a matter of hours before taking the stage to collect two awards for his company’s BASEPage 2000 software product.

“I don’t know why I thought that was a good idea at the time, to rush of a 20-hour flight to an awards night, it was very James Bond style,” Mr Buzza said.

“But it was a really good evening. They’re always nice [award evenings], especially in IT because you get to meet a lot of friends.”

Commtech Wireless’s flagship product, BASEPage 2000, was listed as a finalist in four award categories – exporter, infrastructure, product and telecommunications.

The product won in both the exporter and product categories.

“In essence the BASEPage is a-bout taking information from a third party and massaging that information and delivering it to a wireless device,” Mr Buzza told WA Business News.

“If you press a button for help in a hospital bed, that button is the third party.

“It sends a message to the nurse and it can send it out in a whole host of different ways. It can be an SMS, an email, a pager, a big screen LED sign.”

The product is utilised by a range of industries from hospitals and emergency services to casinos.

Mr Buzza said BASEPage2000 is installed in more than 3,500 sites globally, from statewide emergency service networks through to the networking of hospital paging systems.

He said while there were similar products on the market, Commtech Wireless’s system had a competitive advantage because it could cater to many different technological platforms.

“Lots of products do this type of thing in specific areas but nothing is on par with BASEPage as it brings it all into one package,” Mr Buzza said.

The two WAIITA awards cap off a rewarding 12 months for Mr Buzza and the Commtech Wireless team.

“Someone in the office reminded me the other day that we have won 14 awards in 12 months,” Mr Buzza said.