Wi-Fi location services company Airista Flow, a real-time location system (RTLS) technology division of Airista, has purchased Ekahau’s RTLS U.S. and International divisions, based in Reston, Va., and Helsinki, Finland. The acquisition closed on March 2.
Ekahau’s other division, Ekahau Site Survey (ESS)—which sells Wi-Fi design tools for site surveys, including spectrum analyzers and Wi-Fi signal-mappers—will continue to operate independently, and will keep selling its line of non-RTLS Wi-Fi-based products, says Emily Nardone, Ekahau ESS’ product marketing director.
According to Nardone, Airista Flow, headquartered in Sparks, Md., intends to retain the Ekahau brand, as well as offer existing Ekahau Wi-Fi RTLS products and collaborate with Ekahau ESS’ engineers on future solutions that could blend a variety of RTLS-based technologies. “As time goes on, we will work to develop technologies together,” she says, noting that for the time being, Ekahau RTLS’ offices in Virginia and Finland will continue to operate at their existing locations.
Ekahau RTLS offers Wi-Fi-based tracking solutions for assets and staff safety. The majority of such systems are used in the health-care market, though they have also been adopted by public school districts and colleges, and, in at least one instance, on a cruise ship.
Airista makes asset- and personnel-tracking solutions employing passive, active and semi-active RFID technology, as well as RTLS solutions and GPS, for the health-care, oil and gas, logistics, assisted-living and other sectors.
“From Ekahau’s point of view, it’s a question of focus and strategy,” says Michel Wendell, Ekahau ESS’ chairman and CEO, when asked why his company sold its RTLS division to Airista. Ekahau wanted to focus specifically on only a single division, he says, “and that was ESS.” Ekahau ESS will continue to operate as it has, Wendell adds, selling its suite of Wi-Fi tools. “We feel there’s lot of potential on the RTLS side,” he notes, “but we don’t necessarily have all the resources we want” to continue growing as an RTLS solutions provider.
“There’s a plethora of different aspects of asset management,” Wendell states. Ekahau, he explains, had been seeking another RTLS firm with the resources and customer base to provide the variety of hardware and enterprise software necessary for customers wishing to manage assets and personnel.
Airista Flow offers a diversity of technology and solutions, such as hand-hygiene systems, making the acquisition especially desirable for Ekahau, Nardone says. Airista Flow, she adds, can now combine its customer base and technology expertise with Ekahau’s Wi-Fi-based RTLS technology to develop more solutions for health care and other markets.
Both Ekahau ESS and Airista are privately owned. Ekahau ESS is a venture-backed business, Nardone says. Ekahau declines to identify the terms of the acquisition, including the sales price paid by Airista.
Wendell says he considers real-time location systems a technology with promise for a company that can offer flexible, enterprise-wide solutions. “RTLS has taken a long time to get where it is today. The [previous] projection of rapid growth hasn’t happened,” he says, though he still expects growth in RTLS technologies—not only in health care, but in other markets as well.
Airista did not respond to requests for comment.