Wavelink Supports RFIDWavelink Supports RFID

KIRKLAND, Wash. -- Wavelink Corporation, a leading provider of mobile infrastructure management software for the enterprise, today announced that it is incorporating Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) development tools into its popular application middleware products, Wavelink Studio and Wavelink Emulation. This enhancement to the Wavelink middleware products eases the transition to RFID-based supply chain functions for customers by enabling wireless developers to easily integrate the latest in RFID technology into their business applications.

Wavelink's leading Emulation and Studio products already run in thousands of mission critical supply chain environments. Wavelink Emulation is installed in 10 of the top 12 retailers in North America and has more than 800,000 client seats in use, while Wavelink Studio runs mission critical applications for leading companies like Office Depot, Nordstrom, Cardinal Health and Eckerd Drugs.

"RFID promises to transform information flow across global supply chains," said Wai Sing Lee, industry analyst for Frost & Sullivan. "Wavelink's market leadership and proven technology in Wi-Fi make it a natural choice for wireless developers looking to provide RFID capabilities. By adding RFID to its middleware products, Wavelink makes it easy for customers to join the RFID revolution."

RFID technology represents a major transformational event in IT predicted by analysts to be akin to the arrival of the PC and demanding a new generation of infrastructure. With the proliferation of this infrastructure, business applications that involve asset tracking, data collection and other supply chain functions need to be modified and developed to read and interact with dynamic RFID tags. In addition, there is a need to configure, secure and manage large installations and volumes of data. Wavelink is the only provider of RFID programming tools that interoperate across a wide range of platforms from multiple vendors enabling developers to write their RFID application once and run it across many systems.

"Application developers seeking to capitalize on new RFID deployments for their customers should welcome Wavelink's move to RFID," said Brian Ho, president, HiPoint Software. "Having RFID controls within Wavelink's development tools will remove many of the programming hurdles, increase development flexibility and speed time to market for those seeking to embrace this next wave of innovation."

"Studio is a powerful and flexible tool for developers to extend or write new applications for Intermec devices," said Mike Colwell, vice president for Intermec. "With Wavelink's RFID enhancements, developers can now easily RFID-enable their applications across Intermec's mobile systems without having to start from scratch."

"Our wireless application middleware products are implemented by many of the world's major global manufacturing, logistics and retail corporations," said Dave Bullis, CEO, Wavelink. "With the onset of the RFID revolution, our development partners and customers need a clear path to advance their business and incorporate the advantages of RFID into their applications and across their systems. Providing RFID tools enables our customers to deliver RFID applications using already proven technology."

With the enhancements to Wavelink's established Studio and Emulation products, customers can take existing data collection applications using barcodes to the next generation of dynamic data collection with RFID. In addition, developers can tightly integrate their applications with other workflow and data collection functions, such as barcode scanning, point of sale credit card reading and wireless printing. Wavelink also enables developers to extend applications on mainframes to interact with RFID tags through Wavelink's Emulators.

Wavelink Corp.