Mobile App audience is still largely male, young and affluent

This won't be a surprise to anyone who followed the mobile market for sometime. The same demographic was the sweet spot for wireless voice services and then wireless data services providers. More details here. An in due time, as it did for the wireless services above, wider adoption across age, gender and revenue will take place.

Omnitrol Networks' Platform Selected By BT to Provide Retailers with Real-Time Inventory Traceability and Predictive Replenishment Services

The momentum continues around our Retail Shop-Floor Inventory Tracking Solution.

Omnitrol Networks has been selected by BT, one of the world’s leading providers of communications solutions and services, for the deployment of RFID-based retail inventory solutions.

BT, behind Europe’s largest RFID retail deployment, will collaborate with Omnitrol Networks, to deliver proven and innovative merchandise tracking and visibility solutions for retailers around the world.
The solutions will track actual inventory movements and item-level velocity by stock keeping unit (SKU). They will deliver proactive real-time replenishment alerts and visibility for retail store managers. This will enable near-perfect tracking accuracy and forecasted inventory levels, which will help retailers dramatically increase employee productivity.

What makes this announcement significant is that other fully integrated solution providers don’t have the reach and RFID pedigree to support the global deployment of their solutions. Global retailers have specific requirements that require significant development/customization for the other solutions. Because of the proven OMNITROL platform, the new solution only requires configuration changes and minimum customization to meet new requirements. By combining this level of versatility and performance with BT’s global reach and IT expertise, the companies are now poised to deliver a truly global, RFID-based retail solution.

CHEP selects Omnitrol Networks' platform to deliver technology for the development of a track-and-traceability solution

CHEP is a global leader in managed, returnable, and reusable packaging solutions, serving many of the world's largest companies in sectors such as consumer goods, fresh produce, beverage, and automotive. CHEP’s service is environmentally sustainable and increases efficiency for customers while reducing operating risks and product damage.

This represents one of the most important scale deployments of RFID technology. We are really happy to help CHEP in their endeavour to provide visibility to their large network around the world. This is also a great endorsement for our work to deliver a real-time collaborative and operational intelligent supply-chain network. Read the news release here.

Omnitrol Networks Closes Funding Round to Meet Accelerating Demand

Omnitrol Networks announced today that it has closed a round of financing with Javelin Venture Partners and several existing investors. A select group of new strategic individual investors also participated in the round, including Puneet Arora, the former CTO of TIBCO Software.

The financing round brings Omnitrol Networks' total investment since inception to approximately $15 million. The company has also been previously backed by Westlake International Group and individual founders. The capital will be used to expand sales and marketing, and help accelerate key initiatives in response to sustained industry growth.

Read the complete news release.

NTT Multimedia Deploys Automated Mobile Asset Tracking from Omnitrol Networks

A little bit of background about this division:
NTT Multimedia Communications Laboratories, Inc (NTT MCL) was founded as a division of NTT America in 1996, and incorporated in 1998 by Nippon Telegraph and Telephone (NTT). NTT is a leading global provider of telecommunications services to pursue the commercialization of advanced technologies that would leverage NTT’s expertise in multimedia communications. Since then, NTT MCL has evolved into being the only overseas advanced research and development arm of NTT Communications.

After evaluating available solutions, NTT MCL selected the OMNITROL Asset Tracking solution utilizing RFID sensor technologies from Impinj and Omni-ID. The appliance-based OMNITROL Asset Tracking solution used Impinj Speedway Revolution RFID readers with circularly polarized antennas deployed at the facility entrance/exits. The RFID readers are managed directly by the OMNITROL appliance running the OMNITROL Asset Visibility Edgelet, which implements sophisticated status, presence, identification, and directionality algorithms to determine what asset is moving where, with a very high degree of reliability.

Complete press release here.

EMC to acquire data warehouse vendor Greenplum

Another sign that Big Data is top of mind for IT vendors. The acquisition is showing the importance of getting business value out of the data generated by applications (business or monitoring), sensors, users and customers. Read the article here. There's something very interesting about the combination of data analytics and cloud/virtualization. This is what Omnitrol has delivered in our solutions: analytics-as-a-service.

SAP acquires Sybase for $5.8 billion

This acquisition has the potential to upend the software industry in a significant way. Sybase doesn't have the greatest database market share but its mobility software will allow SAP to connect its enterprise software (including analytics) to billions of devices. Few companies have successfully made key transitions in their business. SAP is in the middle of one them, it looks like they are taking it very seriously.