Ember Corporation today unveiled its ZigBee™ networking product roadmap for 2005 to help customers and partners better plan their future development projects. Ember, a wireless semiconductor solutions company which has emerged as the ZigBee market frontrunner, will unveil a range of new product innovations, partnerships and services over the coming months that will make it faster, easier and more profitable to build new ZigBee wireless solutions.

ZigBee is a wireless, standards-based radio technology that addresses the unique needs of remote monitoring and control and sensor network applications.

Highlights of Ember’s 2005 ZigBee product roadmap include:

• a next-generation ZigBee semiconductor system that integrates greater functionality, provides more application memory space, and offers ultra-low power requirements;
• mass volume production of Ember’s ZigBee solutions for home control and automation, automatic meter reading, building and industrial controls, and other applications where Ember’s customers have already triggered mass market demand;
• a fully compliant ZigBee network stack that is currently in the final phase of standards compliance testing;
• new application-specific extensions for ZigBee networks that will accelerate application development;
• new classroom courses added to the curriculum of Ember University, a top training ground for learning ZigBee application development. These will include new vertical market focused classes, such as home control and automation;
• new customer support plans that will provide more options and flexibility for both small development shops and large OEM customers; and
• more tools added to the Ember Development Kit geared toward enabling high-volume production and lower total cost of ownership of OEM development efforts.  

2004: A Record Year

Ember’s ZigBee roadmap revelation comes on the heels of a breakthrough year in which the company achieved record revenue growth, ramped up high volume production, and signed more OEM customers than competitors. Ember also won numerous industry awards and accolades, and closed $25 million in new funding from investors including Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen’s Vulcan Capital Group, ChevronTexaco Technology Ventures, Hitachi Ltd. and WestAM. In addition, Bob Metcalfe, the inventor of Ethernet who was recently awarded the U.S. President’s National Medal of Technology, was named the company’s chairman.

“In 2004 we helped put ZigBee on the map as the first company with proven products used by our OEM customers in volume deployments,” said Jeff Grammer, Ember’s CEO. “We now aim to extend our lead with an aggressive succession of product announcements, service offerings and customer wins that will keep us at least one technological generation ahead of our competitors. We’re focusing all our future efforts on improving the speed and ease by which our customers tap into the hot growth ZigBee market.”

Some of these new customers include:

• Raymarine, the leading marine electronics manufacturer recently unveiled the world’s first wireless boat autopilot;
• NURI Telecom, a Korean maker of automated meter reading technology aims to wirelessly enable the electric, gas and water meters of America’s homes and buildings with Ember-enabled ZigBee wireless technology; and
• Arcom, a supplier of embedded industrial computer and communications technology, integrated Ember’s wireless semiconductors and software into its industrial network gateways to provide communications between ZigBee networks and IBM’s WebSphere® MQ Integrator.  

In addition to its customer success, Ember’s lead in the ZigBee race stems from its long involvement and contributions in helping to forge the standard. Ember is a promoter of the ZigBee Alliance, with Ember executives serving in strategic roles such as the organization’s vice chairman as well as technical editor for the ZigBee networking specification. Ember is also very supportive of the popular ZigBee Open House events. Ember just completed a successful showing at the recent Open House in San Francisco where it showcased many of its customers’ products and is looking forward to demonstrating additional devices that incorporate its technology at the Open House in Oslo, Norway, June 15, 2005. Ember’s semiconductor system is also the National Technical Systems’ (NTS) “Golden Suite” for evaluating IEEE 802.15.4 products for interoperability.

About Ember Corporation
Ember Corporation develops ZigBee-based wireless semiconductor solutions that help buildings consume less energy, manufacturing plants run with fewer breakdowns, and the country’s borders and infrastructure remain safe and secure. Its vision is to help create an “Internet of things” by enabling the eight billion microcontrollers built into products each year to support low-cost, low-power networking applications in any industry. Headquartered in Boston with offices and distributors worldwide, the company was named one of Fortune Magazine’s top “Cool Companies” and Red Herring’s “Top 100 Innovators” for 2004. For more information, please visit www.ember.com