Ingenia Communications Corporation


Ingenia Communications Corporation is the name of a Canadian internet technology company that was acquired in 2001. The company was incubated at the Carleton University Faculty of Engineering and Design in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. Ingenia became known on the world stage for supporting the development of Canada's SchoolNet and received a number of awards. In the early dot-com days Ingenia had a fairly high-profile at conferences and worked on marquee projects for the Canadian federal government and other public and private-sector organizations. President Karen Kostaszek received awards including the 1995 Caldwell Partners Top 40 Under 40 Award.
In the mid 1990s Ingenia's faced leadership and strategic challenges related to a drive to migrate from a services to a products company. In 1997 Ingenia encountered financial difficulties when an investment deal was not successfully concluded. The company narrowly avoided bankruptcy in being acquired by Stittsville-based Software Kinetics in a two-year earned buy-out arrangement which included taking on the majority of the company's employees, the clients, and contracts. Software Kinetics was then taken over by Xwave Solutions which is the IT Consulting arm of the maritime TelCo Aliant.