Ember Corporation today announced a strategic
investment and development agreement with In-Q-Tel, a private venture
group established by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). Ember, a
leading ZigBee(TM) wireless semiconductor systems company, will use
the investment to develop wireless sensor, monitoring and control
technology.
ZigBee is a wireless, standards-based radio technology designed for
low-power networking applications including home control and
awareness, building automation, medical monitoring, industrial
automation, asset management and homeland security.
Ember develops tiny, low power ZigBee systems for creating wireless
sensing and control networks that automatically configure and heal
themselves, and work for years on very little power. Ember’s ZigBee
system is already being used in a variety of consumer and industrial
applications, such as home automation and control, automatic meter
reading and cold chain monitoring. The government has a variety of
low-power, low-data-rate applications that will benefit from Ember’s
proven commercial analogues.
“Ember is the market leader with a mature platform that has been
successfully deployed in a variety of applications around the world,”
said Gilman Louie, president and CEO of In-Q-Tel. “We believe their
technology has great potential to improve the security and efficiency
of government and defense operations.”
Ember’s ZigBee leadership is reflected in its long involvement and
contributions in helping to forge the standard. Ember is a promoter of
the ZigBee Alliance, with its employees serving in strategic and
technical roles in the organization. Ember’s semiconductor system is
also the National Technical Systems’ (NTS) “Golden Suite” for
evaluating IEEE 802.15.4/ZigBee products for interoperability.
About In-Q-Tel
In-Q-Tel is a private, independent, not-for-profit venture group
funded by interested Intelligence Community partners to include CIA,
DIA, FBI and NGA. Launched in 1999 by the CIA, In-Q-Tel’s mission is
to identify and invest in companies developing cutting-edge
information technologies that serve United States national security
interests. Working from an evolving strategic blueprint that defines
the Intelligence Community’s critical technology problem areas,
In-Q-Tel engages with entrepreneurs, established companies,
researchers and venture capitalists to deliver technologies that pay
out in superior intelligence capabilities. Learn more at
www.in-q-tel.org.
About Ember Corporation
Ember enables communication among embedded microcontrollers with
standards-based wireless mesh networking semiconductors and software.
Ember helps its customers to automate home appliances, lower energy
consumption in buildings, keep borders and infrastructure secure, and
control industrial processes, just to name four of the many diverse
applications being developed by Ember’s more than 100 customers. Spun
out of MIT in 2001, Ember is headquartered in Boston and has its radio
development center in Cambridge, England and distributors worldwide.
Ember is a lead member of the ZigBee Alliance, and its platform is the
National Technical Systems’ (NTS) “Golden Suite” for 802.15.4/ZigBee
interoperability testing. For more information, please visit
www.ember.com.
