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Apprion and Motorola in OEM agreement

05/13/2009

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. – Apprion today announced it has signed an OEM agreement with Motorola that extends the relationship established last year when Motorola announced it had invested in Apprion through its strategic venture capital arm, Motorola Ventures. The OEM agreement enables the two companies to jointly develop and market integrated wireless application networks for industrial enterprises. By integrating Apprion’s industrial-focused wireless appliances and applications with Motorola’s comprehensive line of indoor and outdoor wireless networking solutions, industrial enterprises will now be able to leverage best-of-class wireless networks, enabling them to support dozens of applications that utilize numerous wireless radios and protocols.

“Industrial systems have unique requirements. As industrial enterprises adopt wireless technologies, we have seen these unique requirements grow in complexity,” said Bob Mick, vice president of emerging technologies at ARC Advisory Group. “Apprion and Motorola understand the unique challenges industrial enterprises face as they go wireless. By working together, we expect them to produce wireless networking products and applications that enhance the productivity, efficiency, mobility, safety and security of industrial enterprises."

Through the OEM agreement, Apprion and Motorola will initially incorporate wireless broadband systems and wireless LAN (WLAN) solutions from Motorola into the Apprion ION System. The second phase of enhancements will result in the full integration of Motorola products and technologies as modular components of Apprion’s IONosphere and IONizer solutions. The combination of Apprion and Motorola technologies will enable a wide range of applications. Examples include mobile safety applications, unified voice communications, perimeter security, predictive maintenance and remote monitoring and optimization of critical assets including compressors, batteries, solar panels and pumping stations.

The functional demands of different industrial applications require different wireless technologies. For example, wireless instrumentation may be best matched with energy-efficient radios and protocols such as WiHART, whereas other applications, such as the video monitoring of remote sites, may require long-range wireless broadband capabilities such as WiMAX.

Apprion’s ION System is the first and only open, scalable and extensible infrastructure for monitoring, managing and securing multi-vendor wireless devices and applications. The ION System consists of the Apprion IONosphere and IONizers. The IONosphere is an industrial network appliance that manages data services, workflow, security, monitoring and maintenance, and third-party application integration across wireless plant networks. Apprion's IONizers are industrial wireless field appliances for multi-protocol, multi-vendor wireless networks that cost-effectively integrate and secure previously stand-alone wireless applications, such as video, location tracking, voice-over-IP (VoIP) and condition-based monitoring.