The cost-effective real-time location sensing with variable resolution offered by Sonitor's combined Wi-Fi and ultrasound technology brought Sonitor the title this year.
Why Cool?
Sonitor was selected as Gartner Cool Vendor 2012 because of the unique combined Wi-Fi/ultrasound RTLS technoogy and the high level of flexibility it's variable resolution supports.
"The use of ultrasound requires no line of sight, and a single access point unit can cover a normally sized room. Depending on the resolution requirements, different areas can be equipped with different infrastructure, providing four different levels of position resolution form just positioning when tags pass a gate or chokepoint; room-by-room resolution; zone-within-a-room resolution; and within-an-inch resolution, all using the same tag."
Long battery life and the accurate and reliable real time location of the system is also emphasized in the analysis:
"The tag (...) has very low power consumption keeping it in operation for up to five years on a single battery. The position is updated every second, making the system truly real time. One of the advantages of using utlrasound is that the position truly reflects on what side of a wall or on what floor the tag is located - something that can be challenging when just using Wi-Fi technology. Due to its high resolution and real time characteristics, this technology can be used to monitor what objects have been in proximity, in addition to traditional real time location use cases.
About Gartner's Cool Vendors
Gartner does not endorse any vendor, product or service depicted in its research publications, and does not advise technology users to select only those vendors with the highest ratings. Gartner research publications consist of the opinions of Gartner's research organization and should not be construed as statements of fact. Gartner disclaims all warranties, expressed or implied, with respect to this research, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose.
