Zebra and OAT/Checkpoint – two established leaders in their respective markets - announced that they entered into a “cooperative relationship and licensing agreement”. The non-exclusive arrangement affords Zebra with an OEM license for OATxpress™, a middleware platform used for capturing, filtering and managing data from AutoID systems. I say AutoID here – not RFID – because the OAT product is a true AutoID platform, not only capable of supporting a host of AutoID and sensor solutions, but also capable of supporting further application development.
Why this is a good fit:
While the early focus of the OEM relationship will be in Zebra’s and Zebra channel partners’ location products and solutions that leverage the OAT/Checkpoint software platform, we expect rapid integration into other application and technology solutions. This will enable Zebra’s customers (users and partners) to mix and match AutoID technologies based on business process improvement requirements (which drive technology selection/change).
The complementary nature of this relationship along with the benefits for each firm makes this a win-win in our book. VDC will be monitoring the maturation of this relationship, the resulting bundled solutions and watching to see if other companies collaborate in a similar fashion.