ELON: From the BullMarket Report: LEADING SWEDISH TELECOM CO. SELECTS ECHELON'S LONWORKS
Echelon Corporation (ELON, $92, up 2) the leader in networking everyday
devices, announced that Telia AB, the leading Swedish telecom company, has
chosen Echelon's LonWorks system as a standard for networking devices in
Telia's Connected Home initiative. The initiative will involve typical
products and services for the home including networked kitchen appliances,
interactive entertainment center, home control and security systems, and
home offices. Telia will conduct initial field trials in select areas of
Scandinavia during the year 2000.
COMMENT: The LonWorks standard is employed by yet another telecom
company. The acceptance of the Echelon-created platform is growing ever
closer to forming a critical mass. When this point is reached, we will be
witness to explosive growth. There aren't a lot of companies out there
right now that have more exciting prospects, or more potential, than
Echelon.
A LITTLE BIT MORE ABOUT ECHELON:
The CEO of Echelon is Ken Oshman, who joined Echelon in 1988, and who came
with a successful track record. Oshman co-founded the Rolm Corporation in
1969 and served as CEO, president, and director until Rolm was acquired by
IBM in 1984. He then served as a vice president of IBM until 1986. He
has MS and Ph.D. degrees in electrical engineering from Stanford
University. He is also a current member of the board of directors of Sun
Microsystems. This should be noted because Sun's Jini is often thought of
as competition for Echelon (it's not)
Echelon is an entity made up of two main components : The company itself
and LonWorks. LonWorks is the world-wide internet interoperable systems
network, created and developed by Echelon. Echelon built the LonWorks
network over many years and LonWorks has been designated as the standard
networking system for a number of industries, standard's boards, as well
as for a few countries. A while back Finland made LonWorks their
standard. This is significant because historically web/tech appliances
are adopted earlier in their life-cycles in Finland than the rest of the
world. That which is successful in Finland today is likely to be
successful in the rest of the world tomorrow. |
