OAT Unveils OAT Foundation Suite 4.5

Industry’s First RFID Data Management System and RFID Design Environment Accelerates ROI and Eases Configuration and Management

WALTHAM, Mass. – April 4, 2005 – OATSystems®, Inc., the recognized RFID framework leader, announced the latest version of the company’s flagship OAT Foundation Suite 4.5, with major new enhancements including an enterprise RFID data management system that integrates RFID data from trading partners and provides advanced analytics and reporting of goods movement and inventory, and an RFID design environment for easy configuration and integration of RFID-centric processes.

Companies deploying RFID today face the dual challenge of identifying the long-term ROI of RFID while minimizing total cost of ownership of the solution. OAT Foundation Suite 4.5 addresses both requirements, with an advanced analytics and reporting platform that accelerates ROI, and an intuitive and flexible design environment that makes it easy to configure and manage an RFID solution without expensive custom development.

“With the release of OAT Foundation Suite 4.5, OAT continues to set the standard in RFID by adding enterprise-wide data management and analytics and a flexible design environment to our industry-leading platform,” commented Prasad Putta, CEO, OATSystems. “OAT Foundation Suite 4.5 is unique because it is a foundation for companies at all stages of adoption, whether they are beginning with a small-scale tagging operation or an enterprise-wide deployment across hundreds of facilities.”

OAT Foundation Suite 4.5 includes important enhancements to a number of modules within the product suite, including OATaxiom and OATlogic, detailed below.

RFID Data Management System

Companies shipping RFID-tagged goods need a reporting and analytics solution that enables them to turn RFID read data collected across the supply chain into actionable information. OATaxiom 4.5 provides a flexible analytics platform with an RFID-centric data-cube and pre-built reports that make it easy to find the ROI in an enterprise’s RFID data:

Near real-time inventory status by product, location, and retailer

Trend analyses on product velocity changes by product, location and retailer

Read rate analyses by location, by retailer with comparisons

Track and trace reports for complete EPC history

Web-based portal and interactive interface (drag and drop, pivot, charting, etc.)

Export formats to PDF and MS Excel, with scheduled report delivery to email

Re-creating a clean record of physical goods movement and inventory from RFID data presents a unique data management challenge, given imperfect read rates and the widely varying protocols and formats for RFID data exchange today. OATaxiom 4.5 includes pre-built adapters for easy integration and an advanced consistency engine to create a clean record of an enterprise’s RFID data for analytics and reporting:

Consistency engine provides exception handling and filtering to remove erroneous reads, inferencing for missed reads and reprocessing for incorrect data imports

Retailer adapters include pre-built data models of a retailer’s supply chain, models for DC and store reader deployments, and data constructs for easy data loading

Automated polling mechanisms to aggregate and normalize RFID data from all internal and external sources

Dynamic recognition of new retailer locations (DCs and stores)

RFID-centric inventory model that accounts for reader deployment variations

Business document model supports documents such as shipments, orders, invoices, etc.

Extensible data model for integrations to existing WMS and ERP systems

RFID Design Environment

Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) is a critical factor for all companies deploying RFID today. Up until now it has been too challenging for companies to manage the ongoing complexities of RFID deployments on their own. Businesses require a software platform that is easy to configure and manage both at the time of deployment and post-deployment as they add products, ship to new customers, and define new business processes to take advantage of their RFID investment.

OATlogic 4.5 is the industry’s first RFID design environment providing the following capabilities:

Designer provides an intuitive graphical user interface to design new or modify existing RFID-centric processes and integrations to devices and systems

rfXML is an XML-based process-definition language that provides a single, extensible framework for designing RFID-centric scenarios and integrating RFID data with existing business processes

SDK provides full documentation, examples and tools to enable companies to create entirely new rfXML elements for their specific needs Together, these features provide a robust design environment to configure and manage the solution while eliminating the custom development that dramatically increases TCO.

OAT Foundation Suite 4.5 will be generally available in June, 2005. OAT Foundation Suite 4.5 is deployed behind the firewall and complies fully with all retailer confidentiality requirements.

To learn more about OAT Foundation Suite, please visit OAT at Booth 511 at RFID Journal Live! in Chicago, April 10-12, 2005 or call (781) 907-6100.

About OAT

OATSystems®, Inc. is the recognized RFID framework leader with software that empowers businesses to achieve competitive advantage from radio-frequency identification (RFID). As pioneers in the development of RFID technology, OAT has been setting the standard in RFID for over half a decade and is responsible for industry firsts that include the largest scale and largest scope of deployments, as well as the most innovative approaches to providing enterprise-wide RFID solutions. OAT’s multinational client base, which includes companies such as Hewlett-Packard and Gillette, consists of over 50 customers in retail, CPG, consumer electronics, manufacturing, life sciences, aerospace and defense. Headquartered in Waltham, MA, OAT has offices in Chicago, London and Bangalore and is on the Web at www.oatsystems.com.