TOM BEUSCH NEVER PLANNED ON BEING A SOLUTION PROVIDER, nor was owning a technology company a lifelong dream that he pursued in earnest. However, when the offer to procure Miles Technologies, a barcode printing solutions company, presented itself, he saw an opportunity that he couldn’t resist.

In 1998, Beusch, along with his partner Thomas O’Boyle (both Zebra alums), bought the firm from original owner Bill Miles and set off to revamp the way warehouse management solutions were sold. At the time, 98 percent of Miles’ sales involved barcode printing solutions, in particular, Zebra printers, supplies, and labels. Over the course of the next five years, the company added data collection terminals and scanners to differentiate themselves from the other Zebra dealers on the market.

After the first five years, the two realized that they needed to move into selling applications and solutions. The first software Miles Technologies developed was a product called INVision, a warehouse management software for small- to mid-sized companies. That was soon followed by software for RFID compliance called CP Express, which was expanded into a supply chain asset-tracking application called RealView. Today, Miles Technologies is one of the leading solution providers in the nation with customers ranging from small businesses to Fortune 1000 companies.

To learn more about what makes them tick, VSR headed off to the outskirts of Chicago for an afternoon with Beusch and O’Boyle….

Read the rest of the article…

Foster City, CA–(Marketwire) – Omni-ID, the leading supplier of high-performance, passive UHF RFID tags, and Extronics Ltd., a leading designer and manufacturer of intrinsically safe and explosion-proof equipment, today announced a partnership agreement that will expand Extronics’ asset and personnel tracking solutions by certifying and co-branding Omni-ID’s products for hazardous work environments worldwide.

Extronics will certify Omni-ID’s entire range of products for compliance to safety and performance standards for ATEX in Europe, Class 1 Div 1 in the U.S., and IECEx worldwide.

“Recently, we have experienced a dramatic upsurge in inquiries from leading companies seeking effective tracking solutions for hazardous areas,” said John Hartley, Extronics’ managing director. “Omni-ID offers the value and high-quality we required to add lower-cost, passive UHF RFID tags to our active RFID solutions and to provide the safest, wireless infrastructures for mining, petrochemical, process manufacturing, and similar dangerous work.”

The first products of this agreement will be unveiled in early April during Hannover Messe 2011 trade show in Germany.

“Extronics’ expert certification, co-branding, and distribution of Omni-ID’s innovative products ensures that industries challenged by harsh conditions, such as oil and gas, have the reliable tracking necessary to improve supply chain efficiency and asset visibility,” said Tony Kington, Omni-ID’s managing director. “We expect that this strategic partnership with Extronics will accelerate the adoption of our passive UHF RFID tags in hazardous environments around the world.”

About Omni-ID
Omni-ID is the leading supplier of passive, low profile UHF RFID solutions. Omni-ID’s patent-pending technology enables a broad range of new applications to improve asset tracking, supply chain management and work-in-process. Omni-ID’s family of versatile RFID tags works reliably in the harshest environments, including on, off, and near metal and liquids, and excels in solving tracking and identification challenges with unprecedented accuracy. For more information, visit www.Omni-ID.com.

About Extronics
Formed in 1992, Extronics Ltd. is a leading global designer and manufacturer of intrinsically safe and explosion-proof equipment. From its U.K. headquarters, Extronics produces a range of products designed to increase worker safety and which are distributed by sales partners throughout the world. Extronics’ unrivalled understanding of wireless networking enables companies in process industries to unlock vital data from hazardous areas.

SOURCE: Omni-ID

“Our 500th major RFID project is another milestone that sets ODIN apart in the RFID industry. Most of our clients are Fortune 100 companies who need unparalleled expertise, scalable and proven software and worldwide support.” commented Patrick J. Sweeney, ODIN’s founder. “With the acquisition of Reva in December 2010 and expansion into more European countries, we have more than $50 million invested in our RFID software and solutions to make them work better and more accurately than any other RFID software in the world.”

“The proof isn’t in what we say – it is in what our clients say with their repeat business. Four out of the top five medical device companies use ODIN’s software, the leading medical institutions in the world use ODIN’s software, and three out of the top four global banks are now using ODIN RFID solutions. That says it all.” commented Grant Wagner, ODIN’s worldwide leader of sales…

‘Massive retail deployments’ of RFID technology cited as a major market driver

According to new figures from market research firm ABI Research, the global RFID systems market is expected to reach $5.3 billion by the end of 2011, a year-over-year growth of more than 16 percent. The market is forecast to reach $4.6 billion by the end of 2010.

In a statement, the firm cited “massive retail deployments,” growth in asset tracking and management applications and an explosion in demand for passive UHF transponders as some of the biggest drivers for the market’s growth.

“Item-level apparel tracking is probably the biggest area to watch in 2010-2011 and beyond, especially due to Wal-Mart’s ‘jeans and basics’ tagging announcement,” ABI Analyst Michael Liard said in the statement. “JCPenney, Marks & Spencer, and American Apparel among others remain key retailers to watch given their existing programs and deployment plans.”

For more information, visit ABI Research’s Web at www.abiresearch.com or call 516-624-2500.

Apr. 11, 2011—Alien Technology is unveiling a passel of new products—an addition to its ultrahigh-frequency (UHF) Gen 2 integrated circuit family, a line of handheld readers, and four RFID inlays—at this week’s RFID Journal LIVE! 2011 conference, being held on Apr. 12-14, in Orlando, Fla.

The Higgs 4 integrated circuit is the newest member of Alien’s widely used Higgs family of RFID tag chips. The company has migrated much of the performance and functionality of the Higgs 3 model into the Higgs 4 IC—though with the Higgs 4, says Mike Frieswyk, Alien’s VP of sales and marketing, the company has made improvements to the chip’s RF-sensitivity and noise-interference capabilities, which he says will boost the reliability and performance of the RFID tags in which the chip is used. The major change in the Higgs 4 version is a decrease in the chip’s overall memory (512 bits in Higgs 4, versus 800 bits in Higgs3), and how that memory is allotted.

Whereas the Electronic Product Code (EPC) portion of the memory bank in a Higgs 3 chip (which Alien will continue to manufacture) can be configured from 96 bits up to 480 bits, the EPC field in a Higgs 4 chip is fixed at 128 bits. The Higgs 3 model has 512 bits of user memory, while Higgs 4 has 128 bits. (Like its predecessor, the Higgs 4 version stores a 64-bit unique tag ID, and sets aside 32 bits of memory for an access password and another 32 bits for a kill password.)

“We looked at how our customers were using the chip’s memory,” Frieswyk explains. “In 90 percent of the usage models, they weren’t using [all of] the user memory.” Reducing the user memory in the Higgs 4, he says, will make tags utilizing that chip more affordable than those using the Higgs 3 iteration, since memory equals cost. End users who want more than 128 bits of user memory can employ tags with Higgs 3 chips instead.

Alien intends to make samples of the Higgs 4 chip available in June 2011, with general availability scheduled for late September. The company, however, has yet to release pricing information.

Alien has also announced its first-ever line of handheld readers. The ALH-9000 contains an RFID EPC Gen 2/ISO 18000-6C reader module, a 1-D bar-code scanner, a 3.5-inch color VGA touch screen, Microsoft’s Windows CE NET 5.0 operating system, an 820 MHz processor and 128 megabytes of RAM. The ALH-9001 version includes a 2-D bar-code scanner, a 3-megapixel camera (with a built-in flash), Bluetooth functionality, a wireless high-speed downlink packet access (HSDPA) option with GPS (the ALH-9000 model uses 802.11b/g networking and has no GPS option) and a 4,000mAh lithium-ion battery (the ALH-9000 model uses a 3,000mAh battery).

“As [RFID applications] in apparel are taking off, we see handhelds as a big play in that market,” says Pat Ervin, Alien’s VP of global sales. “Plus, handhelds play a role in most item-level applications, whether in retail, or things like asset tracking in data centers.”

Alien has also announced its first-ever line of handheld readers. The ALH-9000 contains an RFID EPC Gen 2/ISO 18000-6C reader module, a 1-D bar-code scanner, a 3.5-inch color VGA touch screen, Microsoft’s Windows CE NET 5.0 operating system, an 820 MHz processor and 128 megabytes of RAM. The ALH-9001 version includes a 2-D bar-code scanner, a 3-megapixel camera (with a built-in flash), Bluetooth functionality, a wireless high-speed downlink packet access (HSDPA) option with GPS (the ALH-9000 model uses 802.11b/g networking and has no GPS option) and a 4,000mAh lithium-ion battery (the ALH-9000 model uses a 3,000mAh battery).

“As [RFID applications] in apparel are taking off, we see handhelds as a big play in that market,” says Pat Ervin, Alien’s VP of global sales. “Plus, handhelds play a role in most item-level applications, whether in retail, or things like asset tracking in data centers.”

The SIT inlay is unlike the others, in that it is extremely small—measuring 0.472 inch by 0.354 inch—but more importantly, it uses a near-field (that is, magnetic, or inductive, coupling) antenna design, so the inlay can be read only within up to 8 inches from a reader. The SIT inlay is thus designed for applications for which the tag’s footprint must be very small—for item-level tagging of jewelry or pharmaceutical vials, for instance—and for which the end user does not require or want long-range reading capability. Alien has offered this inlay before, but only through special orders. This is the first time the company is bringing this model to its main product line. The SIT is also the first such commercially available tag in production, according to the company. Impinj, another RFID hardware provider, does offer near-field antenna reference designs for inlays, as well as a tag chip that can accommodate both a near-field (loop) antenna and a far-field (dipole) antenna on the same inlay.

To operate in the near field, a UHF tag must have a loop antenna, as the SIT tag does. But any UHF passive tag can operate in the near field, as long as its antenna forms a loop, and as long as it is read with a loop antenna attached to an interrogator. The SIT tag is designed for near-field reading, and does not have a second tag antenna dedicated to far-field reading; however, the tag could be read in the far field if it were attached to a conductive product, such that the product could effectively function as a far-field tag, thereby allowing it and the reader to communicate with each other via backscatter coupling.

According to Alien Technology, all four new inlays are available now. The SIT tag will make its debut as part of an RFID-enabled beverage-dispensing system designed by ValidFill. The tag’s short read range enables the system to differentiate each tagged cup within a group of cups in close proximity to one another, while using magnetic coupling to read the tags helps deter RF interference from liquids and metal in the dispenser.

The new chip, reader and inlays are the first major releases since Alien Technology came under new leadership in November 2010, when Peter Green took the helm as CEO. Green says his aim is to infuse a new perspective to the company, since his background is steeped in semiconductors (his resume includes stints at both Intel and Texas Instruments), rather than RFID, specifically. “I’m coming in with a fresh set of eyes,” he says. “This market is actually finally crossing that strategic inflection point to achieve great growth.” His vision, he adds, is to cater Alien’s products and services to particular vertical applications.

“There will be a slight change in how tags are designed, per application,” Green explains. “When I look at vertical applications, I think some require capabilities that are slightly different. That’s something we can use our design capability to respond to, both at silicon level and software level. You can’t do just one chip for everyone.”