Profile: Echelon Corp (ELON.O)

Echelon Corporation, incorporated in February 1988, develops, markets, and sells system and network infrastructure products that enable various devices, such as air conditioners, appliances, electricity meters, light switches, thermostats, and valves to be made smart and inter-connected. The Company's products and services are offered to the principal markets, which include electric utilities, building automation, industrial automation, demand response, street lighting, home control and transportation. Echelon's LONWORKS Infrastructure (LWI) network infrastructure products include transceivers, control modules, routers, network interfaces, development tools, and software tools and toolkits. Echelon's system infrastructure products include the i.LON family of Internet servers and the Network Energy Services (NES) system.

In the building, home, industrial, transportation, and other automation markets, Echelon sells a suite of LWI network infrastructure products that original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) design in, or embed into their products and systems in order to give their products local intelligence and networking capability. For home automation, Echelon offers the Digital Home Alliance, which is designed to bring together a collection of companies that market networked home control products based upon Echelon’s LONWORKS control networking technology. For the electric utility industry, Echelon has developed a metering infrastructure system that it calls NES system. Echelon's primary channel to market for the NES system is through value-added resellers (VARs). These VARs in turn add application software, project management, and other value-added services to provide utilities with complete metering systems offerings.

For system integrators serving the street lighting, remote facility monitoring, and energy management markets, Echelon has developed the i.LON Internet server family of products, which provides an Internet interface and local control capability for remote devices and systems. In quick-service restaurants, its LonWorks technology and i.LON Internet Server are being used to monitor and control kitchen equipment and key building systems through a single network, in an effort to manage energy use and improve efficiency.