Frost & Sullivan Acclaims Omnitrol Networks for Successfully Converging Applications based Networking Delivering Real-Time Enterprise Services for the Wireless and RFID Markets

Palo Alto, CA: June 25, 2007 - Based on its recent analysis of the North American RFID middleware and software market, Frost & Sullivan has presented Omnitrol Networks with the 2007 North American Frost & Sullivan Award for Product Innovation.

The Award recognizes the OMNITROL, the company's application network appliance solution that delivers real-time operational visibility and distributed asset tracking services managing wireless devices, RFID data and readers. The OMNITROL edgeware appliance further integrates secure WiFi LAN router and sensor network capability with a powerful business services application platform evolving the enterprise into a real-time intelligent edge network.

"The OMNITROL was designed as a Telco-grade network appliance with as many applications and standard protocol options as possible, giving it unique versatility compared to other products in the market," notes Frost & Sullivan Research Analyst Brendon Ouimette.

While it incorporates RFID device, and data management, the OMNITROL appliance focuses on leveraging on multi-application networking. The OMNITROL has three significant value-adds for end users: ease of deployment, versatility, and lower total cost of ownership (TCO). These features address three of the most critical challenges in RFID end-user adoption.

The appliance has the advantage of being easy to program with automatic application federation for scalability: once it has been configured, installing and deploying the solution across the enterprise is a quick and low-cost process. The solution can simultaneously manage a number of data sources from different wireless and sensor technologies applying real-time application intelligence and control from a single platform. These attributes and others help to lower the TCO by integrating a number of features in a single product, at a lower overall cost, by providing a common platform and services architecture that can correlate real-time events across a number of different applications.

With OMNITROL, end users will not have to upgrade their entire infrastructure to adapt to the latest technology change or workflow improvement. The OMNITROL encapsulates complete business services intelligence on the work-floor where business operations happen. The OMNITROL mitigates technology investment risk by minimizing integration with existing legacy systems; enabling customers to migrate at their own pace while still being "future-proofed".

"The Omnitrol EASE software platform is built to be able to create and manage business process applications and to be able to develop and implement new ones from a Web-based interface," stated Ouimette. "When new applications for RFID technology become available, the OMNITROL is capable of being quickly upgraded to meet these new business demands by virtue of its devices adaptation and services deployment software application layers and its panoply of I/O hardware interfaces."

One of the more restrictive elements of RFID implementation is the cost of changing business processes at the operational level. Part of what OMNITROL demonstrated with Boeing is that workflow changes can be deployed across a facility or enterprise very quickly.

The result of the pilot proved that the OMNITROL EASE software platform with its service execution building blocks, called "Edgelets" worked as designed. Boeing successfully deployed OMNITROL appliances in its facility, and simulated the deployment of other appliances for its suppliers. This proved that the appliance had the ability to manage Boeing's supply chain and assets in real time.

Each year Frost & Sullivan presents this Award to the company that has released products that address the key needs of their target market. The recipient company has been chosen, partly because of its ability to address those needs, and partly as a result of its vision to integrate RFID with wireless networks.

Frost & Sullivan Best Practices Awards recognize companies in a variety of regional and global markets for demonstrating outstanding achievement and superior performance in areas such as leadership, technological innovation, customer service, and strategic product development. Industry analysts compare market participants and measure performance through in-depth interviews, analysis, and extensive secondary research in order to identify best practices in the industry.

About Omnitrol Networks, Inc.

Omnitrol Networks Inc. is a leading provider of converged service-oriented edge platform solutions for the emerging wireless and sensor extended network ("X-Internet") deployment market. The company's OMNITROL appliance and EASE™ edge application and services engine software have pioneered the market for "Always On" real-time operational visibility and automation solutions. The OMNITROL's unique edge-centric solution architecture enables the industry's most flexible and reliable means to deploy distributed application intelligent networks at the lowest total cost of ownership in the market. OMNITROL Networks is a privately held company based in Mountain View, California. Additional information about OMNITROL Network's products and services are available at www.omnitrol.com.

About Frost & Sullivan

Frost & Sullivan, a global growth consulting company, has been partnering with clients to support the development of innovative strategies for more than 40 years. The company's industry expertise integrates growth consulting, growth partnership services, and corporate management training to identify and develop opportunities. Frost & Sullivan serves an extensive clientele that includes Global 1000 companies, emerging companies, and the investment community by providing comprehensive industry coverage that reflects a unique global perspective and combines ongoing analysis of markets, technologies, econometrics, and demographics. For more information, visit www.awards.frost.com or www.autoid.frost.com.

Press Contact

Public Relations
Omnitrol Networks
info@omnitrol.com
Tel: 408.919.1100

Awards

Subscribe to Our Newsletter for Industry News and Updates

It mitigates technology investment risk by minimizing integration with existing legacy systems; enabling customers to migrate at their own pace while still being future-proofed.

Louis Bianchin,
Senior Analyst,
VDC
Omnitrol’s cutting-edge solution suite automatically collects information from a large variety of sensors and, through predictive analytics, delivers real-time visibility with accurate forecasting between business partner operations. Potentially, any control system or middleware may help an end-user integrate back-end and shop-floor but Omnitrol infrastructure extends business intelligence directly from the operations-floor without the complexity of multiple software layers, thereby minimizing total investment and improving ROI.

Arunkumar J,
Program Manager,
Frost & Sullivan
Omnitrol Networks has become a major force in the industry.

Joe Leone,
President & CTO,
RFID Global Solutions
The OMNITROL appliance's network and business application convergence, compounded by its dramatic economic value proposition, is rapidly transforming the landscape of the real-time enterprise network and appliance-based service delivery.

PG Menon,
VP Marketing,
NextHop Technologies
Successfully deploying asset tracking solutions in the enterprise requires an integrated platform that reduces costs, risks and complexity. Omnitrol's scalable open platform is enhanced by adding Wi-Fi RTLS functionality using Ekahau's RTLS and its open XML/HTTP software interface.

Antti Korhonen,
President & CEO,
Ekahau
Business leaders should care about the benefits that a solution like Omnitrol's could bring to the inherently complex manufacturing models that automotive, aerospace and other large discrete manufacturers face.

Dan Miklovic,
VP Manufacturing,
Gartner
Our current focus is on lean manufacturing, common systems, and ergonomics. To prepare for the next step function improvement in aircraft manufacturing, the Advanced Manufacturing Research & Development organization is exploring network enabled manufacturing, Omnitrol Networks helps us create such an environment by providing the capability to collect, analyze, correlate, and act upon edge device and applications data in a highly adaptive, real-time environment.

Bryan Dods,
Senior Manager, Aerostructures Manufacturing,
Boeing Corporation
The PCB tracking solution combines Texas Instruments’ experience in electronics manufacturing along with our core competency in RFID with Omnitrol Networks' Work-In-Process application appliance.

Mikael Ahlund,
Director of Asset Tracking,
Texas Instruments RFID Systems
I can view the complete status of my shop-floor and quickly identify at-risk orders from my desktop. Instead of discovering late orders through missed delivery dates, thanks to the OMNITROL solution I am always in the know.

Mark Odom,
Vice President of Manufacturing,
Bay Creek Manufacturing
Working with Omnitrol Networks to add UWB capability to their best-in-class WIP visibility solution will offer customers the solution they are seeking to improve their work-in-process operations.

Greg Clawson,
Vice President of Worldwide Sales and Marketing,
Time Domain
The OMNITROL appliance has developed a powerful new paradigm in real-time Work-In-Process visibility and traceability. By combining all the computing, networking, and software resources into a single physical device, Omnitrol Networks is going to be a catalyst of the IT transformation that will support the proliferation of intelligent edge networks.

Joseph Robin Mathews,
Associate Editor,
Silicon India
With OMNITROL, end users will not have to upgrade their entire infrastructure to adapt to the latest technology change or workflow improvement. The OMNITROL encapsulates complete business services intelligence on the work-floor where business operations happen.

Brendon Ouimette,
Analyst,
Frost & Sullivan
Omnitrol Networks' offering combines middleware, device management and networking functions that reduce costs and time-to-market for real-time RFID-based edge services. We look forward to continued collaboration with Omnitrol to bring the benefits of RFID to our customers.

Terry Pruett,
Director of Channel Development,
Alien Technology Corporation
Omnitrol's ability to automatically monitor and track what is happening on the factory floor without user intervention is a unique differentiator. It eliminates inconsistent or inaccurate reports of work in process.

Stephanie Neil,
Senior Editor,
Managing Automation
The aerospace and defense industries are constantly looking for better ways to manage complexity. Among their goals are the creation of ‘sense and respond’ supply chains that help warfighters increase availability of their weapons systems to ensure mission readiness. Omnitrol Networks’ award-winning track and trace infrastructure solution is a proven, scalable and elegant approach to help existing ERP, MRO, and logistical systems achieve these goals in the aerospace and defense sectors.

David Croop,
CEO,
Croop-LaFrance Inc
The OMNITROL solution provides Hobart’s manufacturing team with real-time visibility on all our customer orders without any impact on our operations. The solution eliminates the tasks of order tracking and manual entry. More importantly, the solution makes us a better partner to our customers by automatically sharing critical order information with them 24x7.

Rosemary Brester,
President,
Hobart Machined Products
Most middleware is limited, requires extensive customization making it difficult for use to integrators like us.The OMNITROL supports not only all types of wireless, barcode and RFID technologies, but also sensors and PLC systems simplifying integration with our customers installed infrastructure while providing the flexibility to expand, improve and scale their business processes without incurring high costs.

Paul Pope,
Vice-President and General Manager,
Ahearn & Soper
Omnitrol’s web-based in-production dashboard provides us with a unique Work-In-Process solution that is expected to deliver the next level of process innovation and change order management.

David Hall,
SVP and General Manager,
Endwave Defense Systems
This low cost solution can help to transform the business relationship between customers and their key suppliers and deliver better and faster product.

Andrew Hughes,
Director,
AIDC Gartner
We are delighted to be working with Omnitrol as it will strengthen our existing capabilities within BT Supply Chain Solutions and enable us to better address our customers’ requirements to improve the operational efficiency of their supply chains. The versatile OMNITROL platform allows BT Supply Chain Solutions to quickly customize solutions, and to meet individual customer needs.

Keith Sherry,
GM,
BT Supply Chain Solutions
The OMNITROL solution delivers a new generation network appliance encapsulating all RFID processing and management, thereby eliminating back-end development, reducing setup and support costs for edge deployments.

Andrew Nathanson,
Director of VDC's Automatic Identification and Data Collection (AIDC) Practice,
VDC Automatic Identification
I was extremely impressed with the capabilities of the OMNITROL appliance approach, and its ability to rapidly create and deploy intelligent edge manufacturing services, which led me to select Omnitrol Networks' solution for my laboratory. The new OMNITROL-based network gives us more flexibility than today's approach, making our research more timely and applicable. In addition, the OMNITROL's capability to integrate with all devices on the shop floor, including PLCs and new sensor technologies like RFID, is giving our students and industry partners access to the latest leading edge technologies.

Can Saygin,
Director of the MSA and Associate Professor of Mechanical Engineering,
UTSA
The OMNITROL PCB tracking solution using TI’s RFID chips allows us to automatically maintain traceability on each component that goes into the products we build. We have been able to replace tedious manual scanning with a completely automated process.

Heinz Hornung,
General Manager,
TQ Components