Apr 22, 2021Presented here are recent news announcements regarding the following organizations: Brady Corp., Nordic ID, Atmosic Technologies, Senet, Lorax Systems, XO2Tech and the FIDO Alliance.
Brady Corp. Announces Tender Offer to Acquire Nordic ID
Brady Corp. and Nordic ID have announced that they have entered into a definitive transaction agreement pursuant to which Brady will launch a tender offer to acquire all outstanding shares of Nordic ID for €3.30 per share, equating to a total equity purchase price of €8.1 million ($9.7 million), plus the assumption of external debt of approximately $3 million. Brady will fund the transaction with cash held outside the United States.
Nordic ID, founded in 1986 and headquartered in Salo, Finland, is publicly traded on the Nasdaq First North Growth Market of Nasdaq Helsinki. The company specializes in RFID readers, scanners and associated software to power track-and-trace applications within the industrial setting. Its technology provides a digital identity for every component of a product by enabling customers to monitor and analyze the movement, status and location of goods, while generating intelligent data throughout the manufacturing process.
Brady offers niche-application industrial printers and materials, the companies report, and the acquisition of Nordic ID will position it as a full-service provider of printer and material expertise with Nordic ID's readers, scanners and software. Brady expects to retain Nordic ID's headquarters and RFID center of excellence in Salo, while expanding its addressable market through the utilization of Brady's global footprint. "The acquisition of Nordic ID allows Brady to diversify and expand our presence in RFID into attractive new markets with faster organic growth rates," said J. Michael Nauman, Brady Corp.'s president and CEO, in a prepared statement.
"Nordic ID has excellent technology and a complementary product offering to Brady that will help us expand in the fast-growing end markets of track and trace in industrial settings," Nauman stated. "We intend to increase the R&D efforts at Nordic ID to accelerate new product introductions and to expand its product offering both within and outside of Europe. Nordic ID's technology, combined with Brady's leading market position in niche application industrial printers and materials, make this an attractive business combination in the fast-growing arena of track-and-trace applications within the industrial setting."
"We have expanded and enhanced Nordic ID's technology by providing solutions that enable our customers to manage their business processes based on intelligent data, which brings transparency to their manufacturing processes and predictability to their operations," added Juuso Lehmuskoski, Nordic ID's CEO, in the prepared statement. "The sale of Nordic ID to such a highly regarded market leader in identification solutions presents an unparalleled opportunity for future growth of the Nordic ID solution to a broad set of customers."
Brady Corp. expects this acquisition to be slightly dilutive to earnings per diluted share for the remainder of the fiscal year ending July 31, 2021. The transaction is expected to close during the fourth quarter of fiscal 2021. Following the successful completion of the tender offer, if Brady has acquired more than 90 percent of the outstanding shares of Nordic ID, it intends to initiate compulsory redemption proceedings in accordance with the Finnish Companies Act to acquire any remaining shares.
Atmosic Technologies Intros IoT Energy-Harvesting Reference Designs
Atmosic Technologies, a provider of ultra-low-power wireless technology for the Internet of Things (IoT), has announced its new ATM3 series of IoT reference designs, developed to optimize power savings with photovoltaic energy harvesting to provide manufacturers with flexible, compact design possibilities for Bluetooth-connected devices. The reference designs integrate Atmosic's M3 Bluetooth 5 system-on-chip (SoC) with energy-harvesting technology.
Atmosic's Lowest Power Radio and On-demand Wakeup technologies are designed to provide high power efficiency, the company reports. It has increased the power efficiency of its reference designs with integrated photovoltaic energy-harvesting capability, to extend the battery life of IoT and consumer devices, enabling batteries to last for a device's entire lifetime. The company is offering photovoltaic energy-harvesting designs for consumer applications and industrial use. Reference designs for remote controls, keyboards, and beacons or sensors will be released during the second quarter of 2021, during which Atmosic will offer demonstration units, evaluation kits and how-to design collateral to qualified manufacturers.
"These reference designs will make it easy for IoT and consumer product designers and manufacturers to create remote controls, keyboards and beacons/sensors that have 'forever battery' life or are completely battery-free, thanks to the power and design efficiencies from Atmosic's lowest-power BLE and photovoltaic energy harvesting technology," said Srinivas Pattamatta, Atmosic's VP of marketing and business development, in a prepared statement. "These are yet another set of proof points that showcase how focusing on low power and energy harvesting in every aspect of design will dramatically reduce—and, in many cases, eliminate altogether—the IoT's dependence on batteries."
Each reference design requires a compact photovoltaic cell, which fits within the end-product design to capture ambient sunlight or indoor light, which is then stored for use as needed. The designs offer a variety of energy-storage options, the company explains, and each is developed with the goal of the end product requiring as little power as possible to operate, thereby driving operational efficiencies in end-use deployments.
Benefits include lower operational hassles and costs, according to Atmosic. In industrial beacon implementations, hundreds or thousands of beacons may be deployed at a manufacturing plant, shopping center or entertainment venue, so the costs of battery replacement can be expensive and time-consuming, the company indicates. For personal applications, such as remotes and keyboards, a user need not bother with the inconvenience of replacing batteries. This, the company says, addresses the environmental need to reduce battery dependence among the increasing number of IoT devices deployed worldwide.
The ATM3 reference design series features Atmosic's Bluetooth Low Energy technology, with a power-management unit integrated directly onto the BLE chip. The intelligent PMU features direct connection to the photovoltaic cell in order to maximize harvesting efficiency, the company reports, and to provide the energy required for the BLE operation in real time, while storing excess energy not needed for immediate use.
Senet, Lorax Systems Partner on IoT Natural Gas Safety Solution
Senet, a provider of cloud-based software and services platforms for the Internet of Things (IoT), has announced a partnership with safety and environmental solutions firm Lorax Systems. The agreement is intended to help utility companies monitor and prevent potentially hazardous natural gas incidents, the companies report. The partners have certified Lorax's meter and service shutoff valves on Senet's LoRaWAN network. The integration provides utilities with 24-7 monitoring, with automatic and remote gas shutoff capabilities when hazardous conditions are detected at any location using Senet's LPWAN connectivity.
When a gas leak happens, utility providers typically become aware of it only after a customer reports the problem, by which point a significant amount of leaked gas may have already created a dangerous situation for anyone in the vicinity. By adding valve shutoff capabilities to sensing and alerting systems, the partnership offers utilities awareness and control of gas-distribution systems, which includes automating the secure shutdown of single or multiple valves before a gas leak can become a safety issue. Using Senet's LoRaWAN network to manage communication between the shutoff valves and the cloud, according to the companies, maximizes network coverage and communication range, while reducing operational costs.
"Our utility customers need a solution that provides situational awareness without requiring constant maintenance or exorbitant costs," said Mark Bishoff, Lorax Systems' president and CEO, in the prepared statement. "For many utilities that need to go beyond managing a small number of devices, it quickly becomes evident that a LoRaWAN network is more financially sound than other communications options, especially considering the need for sensor-enabled devices to last for ten years or more in the field. After researching IoT connectivity options, we found Senet's carrier-grade LoRaWAN network provides the coverage and performance we need without compromising on our customers' requirements."
Lorax Systems' Meter Valve is a cloud-enabled mechanical gas valve that provides automatic shutoff in the event of methane detection, over-pressurization, fires or floods, using IoT connectivity to provide insights and remote operation. The company's Service Valve is an underground safety shutoff device that halts the flow of gas in the event of a service-line breach. With operation certified by Senet, utilities can use Lorax's valves in combination with gas metering and other infrastructure-monitoring solutions on the same network.
"Utilities are constantly evaluating new technologies to improve safety, operational efficiency and customer service," added Bruce Chatterley, Senet's CEO, in the prepared statement. "Recently, from a safety standpoint, several major disasters have happened because of gas line failures or breaks, not to mention commonplace leaks that harm the environment. Complementary technologies from Senet and Lorax represent a reliable and cost-effective solution to previously challenging problems. We're excited to work with Lorax to demonstrate the impact of better IoT connectivity on improving safety, the environment and the bottom line of utilities."
XO2Tech Unveils Sensor-based AI Healthcare Chat-bot
XO2Tech has announced the Care-Bot, an artificial intelligence (AI)-based healthcare chat-bot designed to integrate a sentient AI conversational product or brand marketing module, making it what the company calls "the first sentient digital influencer." According to XO2Tech, the marketing module creates sensor-based conversations around a product or brand and a user's feelings, emotions or physical activities, while engaging with that individual's daily routine and lifestyle.
The module provides presential product or brand engagement via emotional, physical and conversational interaction. Its sensor data creates AI-based, contextually appropriate conversations about products or brands by identifying users' interactions with those brands or goods. The device identifies a user's level of interest or engagement by analyzing that person's responses. It can engage with an individual's eating, sleeping, exercise, conversational, emotional, physical and well-being states and sensor interaction to provide experiences or recommendations.
The Care-Bot converts ambient and physical sensor data (such as RFID, NFC or BLE) into human speech, the company explains, and can provide a therapeutic conversational application to address loneliness, social isolation, trauma or rehabilitation. Part of the AI-Caregiver/Smart Care Platform, the module can analyze voice and body vital signs, then use this data to create and guide engagement or conversation, thus providing personalized therapeutic solutions.
FIDO Alliance Creates New IoT Onboarding Standard
The FIDO Alliance has announced the launch of the FIDO Device Onboard (FDO) protocol, an open Internet of Things (IoT) standard enabling devices to be onboarded to cloud and on-premise management platforms simply and securely. Through this standard, the organization says it intends to address challenges related to security, cost and complexity for IoT device deployment. The protocol has reached proposed standard status and is open and free to implement. Initially, the FIDO Alliance reports, the spec will be targeted at industrial and commercial applications. Developers can view and download the specification here.
"The FIDO Device Onboard standard released today builds on the Alliance's ongoing efforts to help close the security gaps that currently exist on the web, by expanding this work into IoT applications," said Andrew Shikiar, the FIDO Alliance's executive director and CMO, in a prepared statement. "Businesses recognize the huge potential of the IoT and the enormous benefits it can bring to manufacturing, retail, healthcare, transportation, logistics and more. The paradigm needs to shift immediately so we can move IoT technologies ahead with safer, stronger and more secure means of authentication for these important uses in industrial and commercial environments."
FDO leverages asymmetric public key cryptography. According to the Alliance, businesses will no longer need to pay more for a lengthy and technical installation process than they would for devices themselves, as the automated FDO process can be carried out by users with any level of experience. Companies will be able to choose which cloud platforms they wish to onboard devices to at the point of installation, and a single device SKU can be onboarded to any platform. In addition, FDO leverages an "untrusted installer" approach, so an installer will not require sensitive infrastructure or access-control information to add a device to a network.
"This is a major milestone that aims to solve one of today's critical challenges with deploying IoT systems," added Christine Boles, the VP of Intel's Internet of Things Group, in the prepared statement. "The new FDO standard will help reduce cost, save time and improve security, all helping the IoT industry to expand rapidly. Implementation of the FDO standard will enable businesses to truly take advantage of the full IoT opportunity by replacing the current manual onboarding process with an automated, highly secure industry solution."
