Tampere, February 09, 2008 - Red Herring today announced that Confidex Ltd. was named a Finalist of 2008 Red Herring Global 200, an award given to the 200 top companies from Europe, North America, and Asia.
"This year's impressive list of submissions from companies demonstrates Europe's growing role as a major center of innovation in the global technology sector," said Red Herring Editor-in-Chief Joel Dreyfuss. "The exceptional accomplishments of European technology startups and entrepreneurs are a testament to the rapid advancements being made in building the European innovation ecosystem."
Red Herring's lists of top private companies are an important part of the publication's tradition of identifying new and innovative technology companies and entrepreneurs. Companies like Google, eBay, and Skype were spotted in their early days by Red Herring editors, and touted as leaders that would change the way we live and work.
Red Herring's editorial staff rigorously evaluated several hundred private companies through a careful analysis of financial data and subjective criteria, including quality of management, execution of strategy, and dedication to research and development.
About Red Herring
Red Herring is a global media company which unites the world's best high technology innovators, venture investors and business decision makers in a variety of forums: a leading innovation magazine, an online daily technology news service, technology newsletters and major events for technology leaders around the globe. Red Herring provides an insider's access to the global innovation economy, featuring unparalleled insights on the emerging technologies driving the economy. More information about Red Herring is available on the Internet at http://www.redherring.com/.
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NYSERDA uses Confidex tags and inLogic’s asset tracking software platform for managing its IT assets
Tampere, Finland, October 1st, 2009 − Confidex, a leading manufacturer of UHF Gen2 Passive RFID tags, including a versatile portfolio of IT Asset Tags, was selected by New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA) to provide their Steelwave Micro RFID tags to improve asset tracking capabilities for all of the agency’s IT assets. NYSERDA also selected inLogic’s RFTrack.NET asset tracking software and Motorola handheld RFID readers to provide a complete RFID asset tracking solution.
NYSERDA’s primary reasons for implementing an RFID asset tracking solution were to improve asset inventory and asset security. NYSERDA is experiencing growth, resulting in a continuing increase in the number of IT assets. State regulations require them to physically take stock of their IT equipment at least once a year. With the number of IT assets continuing to increase, the current manual inventory process became more and more time consuming. Not only was it difficult to complete audits in a timely matter, it was also preventing employees from being able to focus on more important job responsibilities.
Looking to solve their growing asset tracking problems, NYSERDA’s research led them to RFID technology. After several months of research and evaluation, NYSERDA selected inLogic to implement an RFID asset tracking solution. The implementation process included an RFID tag analysis service that allowed NYSERDA to evaluate and test a wide variety of RFID asset tags from leading tag vendors on their assets. Because there are no “standard” RFID asset tags, this critical process allows customers to test real-world scenarios on their assets to not only evaluate and select tags that will work best for their assets, but that will also be cost-effective. NYSERDA selected Confidex’s Steelwave Micro tag as the standard RFID asset tag for all of their IT assets, because of its small size, performance, ability to perform well on different types of assets, and cost. “inLogic’s RFTrack.NET asset tracking software in conjunction with Motorola handheld RFID readers effectively leverage the performance of the Steelwave Micro to provide a comprehensive solution for the NYSERDA.” said Bill Compitello, Confidex Director of Sales, “This is an excellent example of how technology can provide huge productivity benefits when all the pieces fit together seamlessly and the integration is done by an experienced practitioner.”
Some of the benefits they are experiencing from utilizing RFID are being able to accurately take stock of all their assets and the ability to audit in a timely manner. RFTrack.NET also allows them to scan existing barcodes, serial numbers, etc. so that they can eliminate errors in manually entering this information.
Cost and return on investment were a huge factor in NYSERDA’s selection process. Their cost justification is defined by the amount of man hours they are saving on performing audits. Thus far NYSERDA has been able to inventory half of their IT assets in a mere 3 days, instead of the 3 weeks it would have previously taken.
“By implementing RFID to track their IT assets, NYSERDA is demonstrating their commitment to using innovation and technology to solve problems in ways that improve the State’s economy. They are a model for how government agencies can effectively leverage technology to cut costs and become more efficient.” said Scott Porter, a principal at inLogic.
Further information:
Bill Compitello, Director of Sales & Business Development
Email:
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Tel. +1-919-349-5607
About Confidex
Confidex, headquartered in Tampere, Finland, is a fast growing company with unique expertise in RFID design, manufacturing and system engineering. With offices in Europe, North America and China, Confidex provides high-performing, industry-standard RFID tags for demanding applications. The company’s highly experienced team has enabled Confidex to quickly become the trusted partner for major vendors and end-users in the RFID industry.
Confidex's core competencies and experience span HF (high frequency) and UHF (ultra high frequency) antenna design, tag manufacturing, and advanced tag conversion and encapsulation.
For more information, visit www.confidex.net
About inLogic
inLogic is a leading provider of asset tracking software that enables organizations to track fixed and mobile assets more efficiently using Radio Frequency Identification (RFID), barcode technology, and a variety of other sensor, data collection and tracking technologies. Their RFID asset tracking software platform, RFTrack.NET, is designed to solve asset visibility problems by automating the process of physically inventorying assets, improving asset utilization, tracking the movement of assets in real time and securing assets. inLogic customers include the U.S. Military, State government agencies, education institutions and private sector companies. By implementing inLogic asset tracking solutions, customers are able to improve their business operations by having the right assets, in the right place, at the right time.
For more information, visit www.inlogic.com
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Scott Air Force Base uses Confidex tags and AssetPulse tracking solution for IT asset management
SAN JOSE, Calif. — July 16th, 2009—AssetPulse, a provider of RFID-enabled real-time asset tracking solutions, recently deployed its AssetGather solution at the 375th Medical Group, Scott Air Force Base Medical Center. The Center will be using AssetGather to track IT Assets. AssetPulse packaged its AssetGather software along with EPC Gen2 Passive Handheld RFID readers and Confidex’s tags, to enable rapid inventorying of thousands of IT Assets dispersed across two thousand rooms in various buildings. The primary objective was to implement an RFID-based system which would positively impact Scott AFB Medical Center's ability to effectively and efficiently track their IT assets.
The Scott AFB Medical Center uses a large amount of IT equipment in its hospitals and pharmacies to help deliver medical and dental services to its beneficiaries. Even though organizations like the 375th Medical Group have a fair assessment of what assets they own, over a period of time, assets were getting moved and sometimes temporarily misplaced within the organization. This caused the required periodic audits which were manually intensive, to be very time consuming and potentially error-prone, as they involved manual reading of serial numbers and updates in spreadsheets or existing enterprise systems.
AssetPulse has deployed its flagship AssetGather product to address the inefficiencies and possible inaccuracies in the system. The web-based AssetGather software provides up-to-date asset and inventory reports by integrating with a range of automatic identification technologies. These technologies include passive, semi-passive, and active RFID, as well as bar codes. Tracking IT assets using RFID was a high priority project within the Medical Center, and as a preliminary step Scott AFB decided to use EPC Gen2 passive RFID technology with handheld readers.
In consultation with AssetPulse, a variety of passive RFID tags from different vendors were tried out by Scott AFB. The factors taken into consideration by Scott AFB included readability, type of mounting surface, and aesthetics. Aesthetics were especially important for the tags that had to be mounted on the mobile devices. RFID tags manufactured by Confidex were found optimal and were chosen for over 90% of the IT assets. RFID tags were also used to identify the rooms, in order to increase efficiency of the scanning process. Additionally, AssetPulse developed special tools and processes, in consultation with Scott AFB Medical Center, to help streamline the process of tagging all the assets and locations.
“We are pleased that the Confidex Steelwave™ UHF EPC Gen2 Passive RFID tag was recognized as a leading performer by AssetPulse and Scott AFB Medical Center,” said Bill Compitello, Director of Sales at Confidex. “AssetPulse’s AssetGather software effectively leverages the performance of the Confidex Steelwave™ to provide Scott AFB Medical Center an exceptional overall solution.”
Apart from inventory scans and audits, the system will also allow the Scott AFB Medical Center personnel to perform physical searches of batches of assets when they are due for replacement at the end of their life-cycle.
In the near future, the current system would be extended to track new locations and assets tagged with Active RFID, for real-time tracking of critical IT assets in selective areas within the medical center.
“We are very happy that the Scott AFB Medical Center chose AssetPulse products.” said Sujatha Bodapati, founder and CEO of AssetPulse. “It is heartening to see our customers leverage the benefits of RFID, leading to increased efficiencies and streamlining of their inventory processes.”
About AssetPulse
AssetPulse is a San Jose, California based company focused exclusively on providing complete customizable RFID-enabled solutions for tracking assets in various industries, including IT, Construction, Oil & Gas and Rental Assets. AssetPulse’s solutions integrate seamlessly with fixed and mobile RFID readers using Passive, Semi-Passive and Active RFID Technologies or bar-codes. For more information, please call (408) 872-3104 or visit http://www.assetpulse.com/ AssetPulse and AssetGather are trademarks or registered trademarks of AssetPulse, LLC. All other company and product names mentioned may be trademarks of the respective companies with which they are associated.
About Confidex
Confidex, headquartered in Tampere, Finland, is a fast growing company with unique expertise in RFID design, manufacturing and system engineering. With offices in Europe, North America and China, Confidex provides high-performing, industry-standard RFID tags for demanding applications. The company’s highly experienced team has enabled Confidex to quickly become the trusted partner for major vendors and end-users in the RFID industry. Confidex's core competencies and experience span HF (high frequency) and UHF (ultra high frequency) antenna design, tag manufacturing, and advanced tag conversion and encapsulation. For more information visit www.confidex.net.
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Confidex ranks at the top in ABI’s vendor matrix for specialty passive UHF RFID tags
Tampere, July 7, 2009 − Confidex, a leading manufacturer of passive RFID tags, including specialty UHF tags and labels as well as HF tickets, was ranked first in ABI’s vendor matrix for specialty passive UHF RFID tags in harsh or challenging environments. The vendor matrix by ABI Research, an analytical tool for understanding of vendors’ position in specific markets, assessed vendors on the important parameters of innovation and implementation across several criteria, unique to each vendor matrix.
Read the ABI excerpt “Confidex excels at product innovation and R&D. The company boasts a strong combination of RFID tag design competence, RF engineering, customization, and manufacturing experience. This strong innovation is complemented by the company’s expanding implementation capabilities” states Michael Liard, Practice Director for RFID at ABI Research. “Over the last few years Confidex has focused on aggressive expansion within the specialty passive UHF tag market. In that short timeframe Confidex has become a formidable player in the passive UHF specialty tag market,” adds Liard. ABI Research pointed to high performance and quality as key competitive differentiators for Confidex. The company also excelled in the ability for significant customization and R&D capabilities. In addition to these strengths other factors helped Confidex secure the top ranking. These included an in-house tag manufacturing plant that ensures control over processes and quality as well as experienced well-respected management and engineering teams. A broad RFID tag portfolio offering more than a dozen passive UHF tag was a significant factor too. “We are proud that Confidex specialty tag product offering is now recognized as the clear market leader driving innovativeness and implementation in specialty RFID tags for challenging environments,” said Timo Lindström, CEO for Confidex. “This ranking is another validation of the strategy Confidex is committed to. We will do our utmost to maintain and expand our leading position in providing RFID tag solutions that make supply chains, transactions and authentication of goods and people more efficient and secure.” Confidex has received several honours and awards for its outstanding expertise and innovativeness in RFID industry over the past year. Most recently, Red Herring named Confidex a winner on its Europe TOP 100 list and finalist on its global 200 list in 2008. Furthermore, Frost & Sullivan gave Confidex the RFID Technology Innovation Award for 2008 for its contactless ticket, commonly known as the ‘Limited Use Ticket’, which has been successfully deployed in the transportation industry. Confidex offers a complete range of industry standard compliant products from special labels to durable hard tags for harsh conditions. The company has found significant success in solving specific application challenges, particularly in metallic environments. For example, SteelWING, a metal-friendly C1G2 label, uses the surrounding metal as an antenna, actually improving performance. Confidex Ironside, a hard tag among the most durable, on-metal, high temperature resistant Gen2 tags available to date, has been successfully used to tracking assets from steel pallets to train wagons and maintenance, repair and overhaul applications. The Confidex Label portfolio offers a full line of passive UHF specialty labels which are optimized for harsh environments such as high heat and specific material such as wood, plastic, and rubber/tires. Confidex also offers contactless RFID tickets for public transport. Currently, Confidex has a strong installed base of customers through out the globe representing a broad range of industries including The London Underground, Swiss Post and Correos in Spain, the Austrian motorway company Asfinag as well as New Belgium Brewery and Scott Air Force Base Medical Center in the USA. More than 100 partners around the world provide RFID applications with Confidex’s top performing RFID tag and ticket solutions. In the vendor matrix, under innovation, ABI Research examined specialty tag product offering mix, physical specifications – product feature sets, scope of materials/surfaces addressed, tag design innovation/strength of engineering and customization capabilities as well as new application enablement. Under implementation, the following criteria were scrutinized: manufacturing capabilities and strategy, overall market position, leadership, strength & experience, installed base/customer deployments, breadth of verticals and applications targeted/served, strength within verticals and applications targeted/served, partner strategy and approach, scope of distribution channels as well as sales strategy and approach. For more information on the ranking and the excerpt from ABI, please visit www.confidex.net For further information, please contact: Mr. Timo Lindström, CEO, Confidex, tel. +358 (0)40 525 3114, email:
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Mr. Torbjörn Andersson, Vice President, Sales & Business Development, tel. +46 768 5310 130, email:
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ABI Research ABI Research provides in-depth analysis and quantitative forecasting of emerging trends in global connectivity. From offices in North America, Europe and Asia, ABI Research’s worldwide team of experts advise thousands of decision makers through research and advisory services in seven key practice areas. Est. 1990. For more information visit www.abiresearch.com, or call +1 516 624 2500. About Confidex Confidex, headquartered in Tampere, Finland, is a fast growing company with unique expertise in RFID design, manufacturing and system engineering. With offices in Europe, North America and China, Confidex provides high-performing, industry-standard RFID tags for demanding applications. The company’s highly experienced team has enabled Confidex to quickly become the trusted partner for major vendors and end-users in the RFID industry. Confidex's core competencies and experience span HF (high frequency) and UHF (ultra high frequency) antenna design, tag manufacturing, and advanced tag conversion and encapsulation. For more information visit www.confidex.net.
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Confidex tag personalization services ease up the tag deployment
Tampere, Finland – June 11, 2009 – Confidex, a fast growing company with unique expertise in RFID design, manufacturing and engineering, today announced the launch of Confidex tag personalization services. Developed to help ease tag deployment, these services including tag encoding, visual marking and fixing tools. Confidex’s personalization services range is now the most extensive tag customization offering on the market. Now, when Confidex delivers tags pre-encoded with customer EPC codes, supplied with background adhesive or delivered with a barcode that matches with a customer’s existing auto-ID system, implementing RFID systems will be easier and more efficient than ever. Although RFID technology enables identification without line of sight, it’s often necessary to add customized visual information onto the tag. Visual information is used as a way of detecting the tag ID without the RFID reader. It’s also useful as a backup or as a place for company information. Additionally, the tag fixing method needs to be suitable for applications, which require adhesive or special tools too. Most importantly, in all of the systems, the tags need to have known EPC codes to be able track them with RFID infrastructure. In order to match the tag with the customer specific requirements, tags often need to be personalized. During RFID system implementation, finding the right materials and performing the personalization can be very time and resource consuming. This is especially the case when system integrators or customer already have lots of other issues to deal with. Within existing RFID systems, a more convenient way to install new tags into applications is to have them delivered “fixing-ready”. If tags are delivered pre-encoded with the necessary visual information, expanding RFID systems into another location uses less resources and less infrastructure. Confidex offers various tag personalization options, which make tag installation easier for integrators and customers. These services include pre-encoding, visual marking and fixing tools. Pre-encoding can be done with EPC codes or running numbers. The option for visual marking include barcode labels, color printing and laser engraving. What’s more, barcode label data can be easily matched with tag EPC codes and print. This makes it easier to fulfill customer exact requirements, which might, for example, involve putting part of the data into a 2D data matrix or Code 128 barcode format. Confidex has also designed tag fixing brackets, which enable tag attachment with magnets. These are ideal for those cases where application speed needs to be optimized or tags need to be re-located often during use. In a recent London Underground project, Confidex delivered pre-encoded Confidex Ironside™ tags with an adhesive background. This meant that tags were ready to be applied on-site. Confidex SteelBIT tags, on the other hand, have an EPC code marked visually on top in numbers and in a 2D data matrix. “Our new personalization services mean that integrators and customers, who don’t have the equipment and resources needed to customize tags, now have another option.” says Hanna Kosunen, Product Line Manager at Confidex. “As a consequence of already successfully completing a number of projects, our processes are well developed. We are well equipped to deliver top quality tags with personalization that is both high quality and reliable.” About Confidex
Confidex, headquartered in Tampere, Finland, is a fast growing company with unique expertise in RFID design, manufacturing and system engineering. With offices in Europe, North America and China, Confidex provides high-performing, industry-standard RFID tags for demanding applications. The company’s highly experienced team has enabled Confidex to quickly become the trusted partner for major vendors and end-users in the RFID industry. Confidex's core competencies and experience span HF (high frequency) and UHF (ultra high frequency) antenna design, tag manufacturing, and advanced tag conversion and encapsulation. For more information, visit www.confidex.net.
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