News | February 5, 2008

AeroScout Brings Complete Asset Visibility To The Enterprise With MobileView 4.0

AeroScout, Inc., the leading provider of Unified Asset Visibility solutions, recently announced the next generation of its market-leading wireless asset tracking software. MobileView 4.0 provides a platform for driving context-aware applications and automating and improving business processes through the integration of real-time asset location and visibility data.

"As the market for real time location systems (RTLS) continues to expand, organizations are increasingly recognizing the need to leverage the technology for information in addition to location based services," said Louis Bianchin, Senior RFID Analyst at Venture Development Corporation. "AeroScout's MobileView 4.0 not only leverages the firm's history of success and extensive experience with RTLS, but also moves the solution beyond the ‘traditional' RTLS offering by realigning its data gathering capabilities with the market's requirements and preferences."

An integral part of AeroScout's Real-Time Visibility Solutions, MobileView 4.0 integrates wireless visibility data (location, status, auto-ID) from any source, and provides a flexible set of tools for making this data actionable. MobileView 4.0's user-friendly Web interface enables business users to easily manage assets across their enterprise, whether those assets are tracked using AeroScout's Wi-Fi Active RFID tags, passive RFID, UWB or wireless sensors. The software also provides an advanced and flexible set of plug-ins and tools for building and integrating with industry-specific asset-tracking solutions in the healthcare, manufacturing and logistics sectors.

One of the key new features in MobileView 4.0 is its full integration with multiple leading providers of visibility data, allowing users to apply a consistent set of rules to all their asset information. MobileView 4.0 accepts and interprets the following types of location and status information:

  • Real-Time Location (RTLS) using AeroScout's Wi-Fi-based Active RFID system
  • RTLS using Cisco's Location Appliance
  • Passive RFID tags, through a partnership with Reva Systems (see AeroScout and Reva Systems Launch Integrated Passive and Active RFID Solution)
  • Ultra wideband (UWB) for high-precision location-tracking, through products co-developed with Time Domain (see AeroScout and Time Domain Introduce the Industry's First Combined Wi-Fi / Ultra Wideband Tracking System)
  • Sensor and telemetry data, communicated over Wi-Fi through AeroScout tags

AeroScout solutions help customers in healthcare, manufacturing, logistics and other industries to improve visibility of mobile asset location, status and identification. Along with AeroScout's market-leading Wi-Fi-based Active RFID tags, MobileView is a key part of AeroScout's offering and is used by enterprises around the world. MobileView 4.0 is currently in beta testing at several customer sites, including Boeing.

"At Boeing, we have a vision of enterprise-class visibility that can provide actionable, real-time data across a variety of wireless technologies, and AeroScout shares in that vision," said Craig Dupler, Technical Fellow, Strategic Planning, Boeing. "AeroScout's integration of a unified Wi-Fi network with UWB and other best-of-breed technologies is driven by the real application needs of large, global enterprises like ourselves."

Key features of MobileView 4.0 include:

  • Intuitive Asset Searches – using the Asset Locator function, business users can intuitively search for assets individually, in groups or based on multiple criteria. They can view both real-time and historical movement, and intelligent tool-tips provide additional asset data such as status or critical alerts
  • Powerful Reporting – MobileView 4.0 provides in-depth reporting functionality to analyze real-time and historical asset location and status of hundreds of thousands of assets throughout extended time periods, with both built-in and user-generated reports in tabular, chart and graph formats
  • Business Events and Alerts – users can define rules-based business events for up to 17 types of contextual scenarios, ranging from the movement of an asset, to inventory shortage, to reaching a temperature threshold. These events can trigger real-time alerts via several methods including email, Web service, text message and even Skype chat
  • Industry Customization – MobileView 4.0 is fully customizable with a modular design, allowing enterprises to add advanced applications such as temperature monitoring, and tailor the solution to meet their individual visibility needs
  • Open Third-Party Integration – MobileView 4.0 uses an open SOAP API to integrate with a wide variety of third party applications such as ERP systems and hospital information systems. MobileView can both enhance these applications with location and status data, and pull critical asset data from these applications as needed
  • Web and Handheld Views – MobileView 4.0 is available on standard Web browsers as well as handheld devices for mobile use. The Flash-based interface is simple for any employee to learn, and uses context-sensitive toolbars and wizard-based tools to guide users through their everyday tasks
  • Enhanced Management Tools – MobileView delivers a sophisticated layer of logical grouping and authorization to assets, zones and users which ensures that users across the enterprise can view and edit the right set of assets. LDAP-based single sign-on mechanisms simplify access to the variety of applications throughout the enterprise
  • High Scalability and Availability – Built with J2EE, MobileView 4.0's enterprise-grade design is built to handle millions of tracked assets, and tens of thousands of location reports per second. High Availability and Clustering ensure that the application can meet the needs of large, distributed businesses.

"Through years of experience gained in hundreds of installations with industry leaders like Boeing, Freescale Semiconductor, and University Medical Center in Tucson, AZ, we defined the needs for the next generation of visibility applications," said Gabi Daniely, vice president of marketing and product strategy at AeroScout. "This release builds on the success of previous versions of MobileView, and we're pleased to offer an enterprise-ready software platform that will enable our partners and customers to use location and status information from a variety of sources to improve their business operations."

AeroScout's MobileView 4.0 will be available in the second quarter of 2008. To learn more about MobileView 4.0, please visit www.aeroscout.com .

About AeroScout
AeroScout is the market leader in Unified Asset Visibility solutions. The company's products accurately locate and monitor assets and people over standard Wi-Fi networks, to improve and automate business processes. AeroScout's global customer base includes many of the Fortune 500 and the world's leading hospitals. Founded in 2000, AeroScout pioneered the Wi-Fi visibility market by introducing the industry's first Wi-Fi-based Active RFID tag, and is widely recognized as leading the market in number of tags shipped. AeroScout is headquartered in Redwood City, Calif., with offices in Europe, Asia, the Middle East, Latin America and Australia. For more information, please visit www.aeroscout.com.

SOURCE: AeroScout, Inc.