A war of words has broken out between Iain Milnes and Zultys after the industry veteran questioned his former company’s research and development credentials.

Milnes left Zultys in November 2006 after the IP telephony vendor went bankrupt and its assets were bought from auction by US outfit Pivot VoIP. He is now targeting UK channel partners through his new IP telephony venture, Zed-3.

CRN has been inundated with emails since Milnes suggested in last week’s issue that Zultys’s innovation levels have tailed off following his departure.

Bill Rakowitz, Zultys CSE general manager, said: “Iain Milnes indicates that Zultys has withered away and died since his separation from the company. This is simply not true. Zultys has rebounded stronger, more feature rich and with greater third-party compatibility than ever.”

Rakowitz stressed that Zultys has produced an award-winning software upgrade since Milnes’ departure, and is about to launch another major software functionality upgrade.

Mike Galkin, co-founder of US Zultys partner VoiceNEXT, said: “As a Zultys reseller for more than five years, the company has done more since [Milnes’] departure than in all the years he was at the helm.”

Milnes insisted it was not his intention to start an alpha-male contest, but was quick to return fire on his former company.

“I ran Zultys for five years. I put $67m (£34m) of my own money into the company, more than $35m of which went into engineering. Since October 2006, the amount invested in engineering has been less than a tenth of that amount,” Milnes said.

“You can argue that I employed stupid or lazy engineers and that the people in the current company are superior and more efficient. However, since those engineers currently at the company are some of the same people that I employed, I do not think such a claim can be made.”