Colubris Networks Inc., a wireless infrastructure company, today announced a new line of products designed to meet a wide array of enterprise communications needs, including those that facilitate robot and plant equipment connectivity.
The family of new products ranges from a multi-service controller and a wireless client bridge to network management tools. The new wireless LAN gear from Colubris is reflective of the company's push from managing back-end Wi-Fi infrastructure to accommodating all aspects of data connectivity. To that end, mobility, security, and favorable pricing are what Colubris officials claim will set its products apart from those of competing Wi-Fi equipment makers.
Companies, including manufacturers, are finding new ways to use the radio frequency (RF) communications spectrum. Beyond connecting employees to relevant data, some are opening up the airwaves to on-site visitors -- whose access privileges can be managed through Colubris's products -- as well as using the technology for location detection and voice communication applications. Moreover, manufacturing-specific applications are emerging -- namely, robot control, which Colubris said is a good fit for its scalable and secure WLAN (wireless local area network) technology.
Often, robots are stationary and connect to the network via wires. But that can be inconvenient, especially if these robots must move around the factory, said Chris Koeneman, Colubris's co-president and vice president of worldwide sales and service.
"We've found in manufacturing, there's a great deal of interest in one of our products that takes that robot and makes it a participant in a wireless network," Koeneman said in an interview with Managing Automation. "We can support mobile applications, allowing robots to move around on a manufacturing floor. And [amid] all that mobility, [the robot] stays connected to the wireless network. The session is never broken and we support the wireless security protocols so there is no intrusion onto the network."
According to Koeneman, Colubris competes with Cisco Systems, and other more specialized WLAN vendors, such as Aruba Networks and Trapeze Networks. But it's the mobility and security aspect of its WLAN infrastructure that is unique, the company claimed. And, the price of its products is attractive, Koeneman added.
Those characteristics, however, were not enough to rank Colubris among the top 10 WLAN security vendors in a recent report from ABI. Trapeze, Aruba, Nortel Networks, and Cisco Systems earned the top four spots. ABI based its rankings on innovation of authentication, end-point security, and management, as well as how a product handled intrusion detection and protection and network resiliency. Other vendors on the list include Bluesocket, Alcatel, Extreme Networks, Meru Networks, Xirrus, and Symbol Technologies.
Still, Koeneman said Colubris's price points are hard to ignore. "We have some customers that line up a little corner of the manufacturing plant for $5,000 to $7,000," he said. For a large plant where full coverage and security are needed, the cost hovers around $40,000.
Products announced today include the Colubris MSC-5100 MultiService Controller for small to medium-sized enterprises. It includes automated discovery and configuration of wireless access points. Also announced was a new version of the Colubris operating system, COS v5, which includes enhanced automatic network configuration of all WLAN components and support for the company's Local Mesh Protocol (LMP). LMP can automatically heal the network in the event of a signal loss, ensuring quality delivery of voice and real-time applications, the company claimed.
In addition, the company unveiled Colubris VMT (Visitor Management Tool), a software application that enables non-technical employees to interact with the wireless network -- for instance, to issue a visitor's badge, officials said. And lastly, the Colubris WCB-200 wireless client bridge adds connectivity to legacy and specialized equipment with serial or Ethernet ports. With WCB-200, a manufacturer can attach production equipment that lacks native wireless support, the company said.
Collectively, the Colubris enterprise WLAN products usher in a new wave of applications for manufacturers. Take Coleman Powermate, a company that makes compressors. It needed a way to manage its large inventory. Using handheld scanners and the Wi-Fi network set up by Colubris, staff could walk through a facility and synchronize production information with back-end systems in real time.
"We run one of the most advanced and demanding manufacturing operations in our industry, and we needed a wireless solution that was going to be flexible and reliable enough to keep up," said Michael Mantzke, Coleman Powermate's director of IT, in a statement.
Colubris, a six-year-old company based in Waltham, MA, currently has about 1,500 customers worldwide. Typically, the company has worked behind the scenes, providing wireless "hot spots" in airports, for example. But now, it is bringing its Wi-Fi equipment to the mainstream, company officials said.
Today's announcement is part of that evolution. "We are adapting what we have and making it more usable for general purpose [applications] in manufacturing as well as other verticals," Koeneman said.