The company was initially focused on the development of hardware and software to allow personal computers to act as fax machines, similar to GammaLink's GammaFax.

The company later developed fax server hardware for local area networks before ultimately pursuing Voice over IP and videoconferencing products.

Brooktrout Technology was founded in 1984 in the Greater Boston area by David Duehren, Eric Giler, and Patrick Hynes, former employees of Teradyne, a maker of automatic test equipment also based in Massachusetts.

Brooktrout struggled to gain venture capital for the first three years of their existence, owing to the founders' youth and what Giles deemed incredulity at the concept of "talk[ing] to machines".

[3] While Brooktrout had been eyeing the integration of fax capability in personal computers since its foundation, the company soft-launched with a family of expansion cards allowing PCs to receive voicemail and send phone messages.

The FlashFax could serve and store up to 1,000 documents on request through a phone connection using a touch-tone keypad interface that the user could program via monitor and keyboard.

[11] The company soon counted such major clients as Sharp Corporation and the publishers of Consumer Reports, who used Brooktrout's hardware to devise an on-demand article reprinting service for paying subscribers.

[15] In July 1997, Brooktrout purchased Netaccess, Inc., from Xircom of Thousand Oaks, California, allowing the company to enter the teleconferencing market with ISDN Primary Rate Interface cards.

[21] Sales slowly began recovering by 2004;[23] in May that year, the company acquired SnowShore Networks, a developer of softphone applications based in Chelmsford, Massachusetts, for $10 million.

After the acquisition was finalized in the last quarter of 2005,[25] EAS merged their Excel Switching Corporation division with Brooktrout to form Cantata Technology.