BEA Tuesday announced it has stepped up its efforts to help customers deal with the mountains of data collected by RFID systems by agreeing to purchase privately-held RFID middleware vendor ConnecTerra.
Based in Cambridge, Mass., ConnecTerra makes infrastructure software for collecting data from RFID devices and distributing it for use in applications. It includes “edge” software for filtering data from devices, software for centrally managing data, and compliance software for regulatory mandates in the retail and defense sectors.
BEA said the software will complement its own WebLogic middleware, allowing customers to treat RFID data as another asset that can be made available throughout an organization to be incorporated into applications and business processes.
Terms of the acquisition were not disclosed.
BEA is among dozens of vendors, including its Java middleware rivals IBM and Oracle, that are promoting technologies to help customers make sense of the data generated by RFID systems.
ConnecTerra was founded in 2001. More than 25 consumer packaged goods, retail and transportation companies and system integrators use its products, BEA said. It is also involved in RFID-related standards bodies such as EPCglobal.
BEA and ConnecTerra have already worked together over the past year to create bundled offerings for use with pallet and case tracking applications, and for asset tracking in the transportation industry, they said. Joint customers include Finland Post.
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