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Pitney Bowes + Buglabs = BUGsecure. NEW YORK, March 14, 2011 - Bug Labs, an open source hardware and software provider, and Pitney Bowes Inc. (NYSE: PBI) today announced the industry's first modular, mobile device development platform incorporating hardware-level security and security life-cycle management services. Please see the latest description sheet provided at CTIA last week in Orlando, Florida.
For some time I have been promoting the technical merits of this new entrant into the DAS space. (Well not realy new, 50,000 systems installed in the Far East..and the second year in North America). Integra Systems has been working with them to help position this in the healthcare vertical. Please find attached the most recent brochure completed for HIMSS in concert with Intégra Systems, Inc. They will change thé game in thé DAS space.
http://www.solidtechusa.com
OK, what do a lot of Healthcare CIO(s), like about SOLiD? This is totally non-technical.
- First and only it is the only UL approved NEMA-4 rated remote unit. Yes, you could spray this down with a fire hose and everything would be fine! Rather than having a wall in the IDF all cluttered with combiners, diplexers and a big hunking box; you now have a small compact clean looking "lockable" remote unit. Thus, no one can harm your vital communications for 3G/4G, and it is free from collecting dust and dirt, which can decrease component reliability over time.
- You only need one or two (at most), strands of fiber from the MDF to the IDF. Most hospitals simply do not have 8 or 16 strands of fiber just laying around. Just cutting down on the fiber just makes a heck of a lot of sense, yet alone all the cost of fiber terminations.
- It looks just well made and it is. No birds nest of jumper wires all over, but SOLiD (no pun intended), actual hard wire connections, clean and well laid out.
- High power remote units cut down on the amount of equipment...saving costs.
- This is current and state of the art technology, not five plus year and older legacy DAS technology on the marketplace it seems today.
- Not coming into the healthcare market and promoting shared DAS with WLAN or WMTS which is not the model here in 2011.
- Not promoting a very limited ethernet broadband solution, which is not prepared for the future.
- Unlike a lot of technology providers in this space, "no out of the box failures". The equipment is SOLiD (SOLID) in reliability.
- Very technical filtering, that at the end of day allows all the carriers and public safety signals to work the way that they should in the enterprise space.
The integration and revolution with www.buglabs.net is very unique. It is the first time that a developer can be allowed to build smart new security devices in a cost effective way.
http://www.business.com/news/home/20110314005381/en/Bug-Labs-Pitney-Bowes-Announce-Modular-Mobile
Pitney Bowes www.pb.com has created a partnership with Integra Systems for the embedding of their security evidence platform into medical application and solution offerings. We see a huge upside and major opportunity to drive forward to enhancing security offerings for healthcare.
Pitney Bowes has announced a product at CTIA this week in concert with BugLabs. They have been working on this for over a year. A new BUGbase, that they are calling BUGsecure, that includes a special tamper proof security chip. In summary this new chip, from Pitney Bowes, combined with their enterprise class key management services and the new Bug System gives customers a completely new, high security, trusted platform with which to prototype, pilot, and produce new innovative wireless devices, services and applications. This chip is the same one that lies at the heart of very Pitney Bowes mailing/postage machine whether it is a desktop unit or a room size system and secures over $5B in postage transactions every year world-wide. It called tamper proof, crytographic key store. FIPS 140-2 Level 3 Certified (Level 3 + EFP), FIPS 186-2, FIPS 180-2, FIPS 197, FIPS 46-3.
In essence, it provides an ultra high security source for encryption keys with which to sign data. This type of signature is essential for applications where the risk of fraud are high and/or the need for a bulletproof audit trail is required. For example many medical applications (think phamaceuticals, financial, regulatory, and safety use cases require this type of security. Software-level security frameworks and protocols, while suitable for many users, do not provide the level of certitude that a hardware key store does.
With so much attention being place on mobility and empowering individuals and machines with new information and processing power, the need for the highest levels of security is exploding.
Integra Systems has worked with LANTRONIX and AVTECH to complete the first ever Zigbee to Zigbee to embedded device server to GSM module with a web interface for a medical device company. www.lantonix.com. The MatchAR had a Zigbee radio attached to one serial in and the GSM board was overlaid on the serial out. All done in less than 90 days.
As the leader in indoor radio planning, www.ibwave.com has just been released, 5.2. This release supports LTE in the form of new maps. Also added is new IP based design signal solutions, improved 3D viewer and much more. LTE maps allows for the evaluation of the coverage and signal quality for LTE. Three new maps are now available for this technology; the RSRP map provides measurement metrics about the signal strength, the RSRQ map gives details about the quality of the signal, and the Overlapping Zones map is used when working with multiple sectors.
Well this is very interesting, the two GSM players team up. No doubt, T-Mobile was the struggling player in the consolodated market. Give AT&T an edge in Europe and T-Mobile the I-Phone. We will see if this obtains requlatory and financial approval.
http://www.wireless.att.com
I have been saying for a few years that these guys are the next right survey model and I simply feel this way. WaveDeploy http://www.wavedeploy.com is the only way you can actually test deployment capacity before an actual deployment. Seems to me if you are going to deploy 100 infusion pumps or 150 patient monitors, over a multi-application infrastructure and application model in healthcare; this should be standard best of practice.
The plan can be found at http://bit.ly/f91hBy
www.veriwave.com
Yes, these guys seem to be somewhat the up and comers in the patient monitoring space. Unlike NK and Fukuda Denshi that had to establish their own channels; the acquisition of Datascope allows them an immediate channel entry. Had the opportunity to take a look at their new patient monitor and I was pleasently suprised. While most of the patient monitoring marketplace and parameters see to be commoditized, I found something pretty unique. From my 30 years in this space, it seems that they have reversed the footprint. The screen is orientated no landscape, but potrait, like you guessed it "an I-Phone"! You really do not need a wide screen, because you do not need 10 seconds of waveform to make a determination. This helps in my opinion to cut down the real-estate around the patient's bedside.
www.mindray.com
While I have blogged in detail about the technical challenges of the deployment of 802.11a/b/g, and now "n" over a distributed antenna system model over the years, I have never really discussed the financial and upgradable cost factors. This definitely needs to be looked at.
The whole premise of combining these services was marketed, at least in healthcare; that you only had to break into the ceiling once. All the WLAN access points could be co-located in the IDF (wiring closet), and essentially the passive or hybrid DAS was "future proof"...you never had to touch it again. Sounds good from a pure marketing spin to the executive ranks; but is again reality when you have to make it work. So some implementations went forward, others felt that this was not technically, risk wise, or financially attractive. Thus some made the decision to install a DAS, but to install the WLAN separate from the DAS. Others said, we we will install a WLAN (802.11a/b/g), with a DAS. For the sake of this blog, I have left WMTS off regarding discussions, but this is a whole another topic.
Fast forward, now 2011
That has all changed with the approval and adoption of 802.11n
Remember a DAS was never really designed for diversity, this was simply not needed for cellular or PCS (the model and frequency range), but in the case of WiFi; diversity overcomes multi path. Multipath is a bad thing for RF. Diversity simply helps overcomes nulls "dropouts". So in the sake of having the access points connected to a DAS via a diplexer/triplexer, or combiner in the IDF, the secondary attenna for diversity was often simply terminated by a physical antenna block on the "b" side. a, primary, b, secondary. For 802.11a/b/g, yes this may not be a big deal, however see my previous blog regarding 802.11a.(link budget challenges)
Now the question comes up how do those existing installations that went with a combination of of 802.11a/b/g, upgrade to 802.11n? Well they are in my opinion going to have to go into the ceiling "again" and install a lot of coaxial cable to support MIMO. (Multiple Antenna elements are required for MIMO). Oh yes, let I forget, you will need a whole new propagation model to be developed. So this whole issue of a "future proof", argument is pretty much blown out of the saddle. I guess some CIO(s), that bought into this previous model and spin, will have to convince their executives to obtain both more CAPEX and OPEX $$ for a further redesign.
If a hospital installed say Cisco Systems and/or Aruba Networks previous discrete (meaning stand alone and separate from the DAS), and wanted to upgrade from 802.11a/b/g to 802.11n, yes they would have to change out AP(s), maybe move a few around, but they would not from the IDF, then have to run extra coaxial infrastructure, (depending upon say 3x2 MIMO) to support 802.11n WLAN over a DAS. For this model to perhaps even to work means not changing out AP(s), yes, but breaking into the ceiling big time to design and install a duplicate entire previous DAS installation (passive coaxial infrastructure). It becomes a whole proprietary business model.
In previous, the whole marketing business model was that everything could be done from the wiring closet. Remember, hospitals like to control infection, re-installing coaxial cable to antenna end points is not good.
It seems that some technical integrators make the claim that 802.11n can actually work on "new" implementations from a technical factor. That word "technical" has to be defined as per the attached from Cisco Systems. You would think as the world wide leader in networking and wireless, they would know a few things.
Also, I should say when comparing business and financial models the price deta for RTLS services, with 802.11n over a DAS is 50% higher than simply just installing discrete (stand-alone) Cisco CWAPP to include the location based controller. Makes a lot of financial sense to simply install the DAS for what was intended for and keep the WLAN simply separate. Again, this is my opinion.
So you have to ask yourself from an upgradability standpoint or new implementations, does it really make business or financial sense to stil drive forward with the messaging to combine 802.11a/b/g and now "n" to the healthcare market in 2011? Especially when an industry is under huge financial pressures to save costs..and to decrease risks. What do you think?
