ZIGBEE MEETS THE IBM ENTERPRISE

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ZIGBEE MEETS THE IBM ENTERPRISE
07 January 2006 - Arcom

Arcom and Ember have teamed to bridge industrial wireless mesh networks with IBM's WebSphere environment. Companies can now easily deploy ZigBee -based wireless sensor and control networks across their industries, supply chains or field operations and seamlessly link to their IBM enterprise systems, thanks to a technology partnership announced today between Ember and Arcom.

Arcom has integrated Ember's wireless semiconductors and software into its XScale based, industrial network gateways to provide communications between ZigBee networks and IBM's WebSphere MQ Integrator. This partnership enables companies to save money by using low-power wireless mesh networks to, for example, monitor pipelines, control automation equipment or track perishable cargo, feeding the remote data directly into their IBM back-office applications.

The Arcom/Ember partnership solves one of the thorniest issues impeding the adoption of new wireless mesh technology in industrial applications; namely, making the data from remote sensors and controllers easy to integrate and useful to business applications, according to Arlen Nipper, Arcom's president.

"Bringing information from the field back to the enterprise through ZigBee networks will transform the way many industries do business," said Nipper. "Information can be retrieved faster, more efficiently and at less cost. Ember's solution best addresses the low cost, low-power and standardization requirements necessary for this technology to take off across the industrial world."

Arcom's industrial network gateway incorporates Ember's EM2420, the first wireless platform to combine a 2.4GHz radio transceiver chip with an embedded ZigBee-ready networking stack and development environment. Ember's solutions support wireless mesh monitoring and management networks that automatically configure and heal themselves and work for years on very little power.

Arcom selected the Ember platform because it is a mature technology already proven in numerous real-world applications, as well as due to Ember's strong ZigBee experience. Ember is a promoter of the ZigBee Alliance, and its semiconductor system is now National Technical Systems' "Golden Suite" standard for evaluating IEEE 802.15.4/ZigBee ready products for interoperability.

The Ember enabled industrial network gateway is powered by the VIPER single board computer, a compact module based on the Intel 400MHz PXA255 XScale RISC processor. This rugged industrial appliance uses embedded Linux combined with IBM's J2ME embedded Java product, offering a platform with integrated MQTT (telemetry transport) and device management support. Combined with Ember's wireless technology, it provides an end-to-end telemetry communications gateway that pumps ZigBee network data from remote devices to IBM's publish and subscribe information broker, WebSphere MQ Integrator. The industrial network gateway can be linked to the enterprise network using a standard LAN connection, 802.11b WiFi or via a digital cellular network.

From the broker, information can be distributed on a 'one-to-many' basis and delivered directly to multiple applications using the MQSeries messaging 'middleware'. This solution supplies event-driven, real-time data to any application within the enterprise such as SAP-based ERP, billing, scheduling or even the trading floors.

Arcom is the latest in a growing list of OEMs and systems integrators to join Ember's partner program. Ember's ability to provide a complete ZigBee platform, chips, networking stack and application developer kit, enabled Arcom to bring the new wireless product to market in very short time.

http://www.arcom.com

About: Arcom
Founded in Cambridge in 1982, Arcom has grown to become one of the leading suppliers of embedded computer and communications processors.

Arcom's embedded software development and support capabilities are second-to-none in the industry. Our engineering and support teams in Kansas City (US) and Cambridge (UK) have an enormous depth of experience and knowledge in the field of embedded operating systems, communications protocols, and system design. We pride ourselves on being able to provide comprehensive development tools and excellent support to our OEM customers as they bring their products to the market.

Development Kits - we lead the embedded market with our strategy for new product introduction based on the 'blue-box' development kits. By combining new hardware solutions with the leading embedded operating systems we offer our customers a complete and rapid application development environment.

Embedded Boards - our range of embedded processor boards (x86 and XScale), PC/104 I/O modules, ISAbus and PCI add-on cards are all designed and manufactured by Arcom. This gives our customers fast and easy access to the highest level of technical support. All products are supported by a clearly defined life cycle and a commitment for long term availability.

PCs & Enclosures - we also recognize that customers need products to ease the integration of our embedded boards. Arcom's design team includes mechanical engineers who have developed a number of off the shelf enclosure solutions for stand alone and rack mounted systems.

Industrial Networking - since 1992, we have been actively involved in the integration and deployment of data acquisitions systems for the process control markets. Working with our key technology partners we now offer products and expertise to provide guaranteed data delivery from your field devices straight into your enterprise level applications.

Design & Build - we understand the drive to cost reduce products for high volume applications and to combine this with a 'complete technical solution'. We accept contracts to produce custom solutions which focus on the design of dedicated hardware, developing optimized operating system configurations or complete packaged system solutions.

Through a focused approach to innovative design backed by comprehensive development platforms, global marketing and low cost manufacturing, Arcom pursues an aggressive expansion of its customer base in North America, UK and France.

Arcom is a subsidiary of Spectris plc, the precision instrumentation and controls company.

Our business processes are accredited to the international QA standard ISO 9001 and our products hold all relevant certification.

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