The Newbury Presence Platform is targeted to OEMs and partners, providing them with a base platform on which they can build location-aware and location-driven applications; applications that know the physical location of assets and react or perform their functions based on that location. The platform is Wi-Fi based; it works with Wi-Fi APs from vendors including Cisco, Aruba, Symbol, Nortel, and Trapeze to translate their individual positioning data of associated Wi-Fi clients into location objects and data that can be used by the developer's application. As such, developers that create applications on the platform can then deploy their applications within standard Wi-Fi infrastructures. Newbury notes that any 802.11 devices can be detected by the platform without requiring specialized clients or software/firmware upgrades to the APs.

Wi-Fi gear itself (laptops with Wi-Fi NICs, Wi-Fi phones, etc.) can be detected by virtue of the their Wi-Fi connectivity; while non-Wi-Fi assets (people, furniture, equipment, etc.) can be tracked by attaching to them a Wi-Fi Asset Tag, which Newbury expects to offer in multiple formats from key-sized lightweight tags with short battery lives, to wearable pager-sized tags for mobile personnel, to larger, semi-permanent tags with longer battery lives (years). The tags themselves are just Wi-Fi compliant gear that associate to an access point and are therefore detected by the platform.

Features of the platform include a graphical console providing a real-time view of an object's location to a room an a floor; and a graphical builder tool allowing for the definition of locations, objects, and services for use in the target application. Out-of-the-box components include alerting, reporting, and notifications for external systems; and both Web and Java APIs are exposed.

A separate product and example of an application that leverages the Newbury Presence Platform is the vendor's Active Asset, which provides for real-time tracking and management of critical assets and displays the current whereabouts of such assets in a visual display. Also supported are alerting capabilities, allowing for sending of an immediate alert when an asset leaves its designated area.

The Newbury Presence Platform will be available to all certified Newbury OEM and channel partners within 30 days. Active Asset pricing starts at $12,995 and is expected to be commercially available within the next 60 days.

Contact Newbury Networks for further information.