CYBRA Unveils New Release of Auto-Label Software

Published: September 19, 2006

by Mary Lou Roberts

COMMON attendees visiting the CYBRA booth in the Expo are treated to "The RFID Express," a giant LEGO train display with 40 feet of track, simulating items moving between New York, Chicago, St. Louis, and San Francisco. LCD monitors in the booth show a dashboard as RFID tags are read in real time, and the DB2/400 database is updated, as the rail cars travel from factory to warehouse to distribution center to retailer. Continuing with the theme, conference attendees are invited aboard the RFID train where they can win a collectible Lionel Polar Express electric train and other prizes. They can even munch on Choo Choo Charley's favorite food: Good & Plenty candy.

Against this backdrop, CYBRA announced Monday at the conference that it has released Version 6 of its MarkMagic Bar Code Label, its radio frequency identification product, RFID Tag, and SM@RT Forms software for the System i. Further, the company is offering a free trade-up to MarkMagic for up to 100 customers of competitive products.

MarkMagic, according to Harold Brand, president of CYBRA, is used by thousands of customers to do barcode labeling and produce RFID tags and smart barcodes, directly from the System i with intuitive and easy-to-use designer software. But customer needs are changing, Brand says. Because the same customers who need to do barcode labeling also need to do other kinds of printing, it also made sense to use that designer to do other things, such as printing electronic laser-type forms and printing plastic cards with magnetic stripes that can come right out of the System i database. "In a nutshell, while the focus is primarily on labels, MarkMagic is the printing vehicle for getting demanding print jobs done, supporting hundreds of different printer types," he says.

Some of the new features of Version 6 are designed for those customers moving to RFID implementation. Brand notes that, "Just by the nature of the customer base, the System i world is very heavily involved in the transition to RFID, most specifically in compliance with the EPC and DOD mandates. This includes manufacturing companies that are very prominent in the System i community." And, while to date, all of the CYBRA System i RFID applications that are in place have been mandate driven, the company is beginning to see more companies looking to implement a solution or extend a mandate-driven solution across the environment. "Once they see the significant enhancements of RFID over the bar coding solutions of the past," Brant says, "they are hooked."

New MarkMagic Version 6 features include:

• Additional RFID support in the form of RFID field types and formatting to meet evolving industry standard compliance specifications, including EPC Gen 2 and DOD.
• A new optional Rule-Based Print Manager that will give customers the ability to redirect and modify in-process print jobs without programming. Spool files that meet user-defined criteria can be manipulated and printed according to user-determined rules, eliminating the need for almost all complex firm printing applications. Using intelligent print routing, spool files can be separated and sent to different printers and e-mail addresses based on the data in the spool file, and label file records can cause several labels to be printed on different printers based on the information in the label file.
• Added Fax Support for the PDF e-mail option. PDF documents with searchable text and readable bar codes that can be sent as e-mail attachments can now be sent via fax as well, working in conjunction with IBM's Fax/400 product.
• Support for Paxar/Monarch's Pathfinder Ultra 6039, the "scan, print, and apply" handheld label printer. Used with MarkMagic, this offers additional flexibility for labeling applications such as markdowns, item identification, cross docking, carton routing, UPC printing, and other consumer goods manufacturing and retailing needs, with support for more than 300 printer types. The Pathfinder Ultra 6039, which runs 5250 terminal emulation on the Windows CE operating system to communicate with the System i host, features a 203 DPI, 2-inch-wide print head, a laser barcode scanner, touch screen technology, an Intel XScale processor, and a Symbol Spectrum 24 RF module.
• New RFID data collection integration with Quatred QUICK (Quatred Universal Interface Control Kit) service-oriented architecture (SOA) foundation for the rapid deployment of barcode, radio frequency, and RFID data collection systems. This integration enables customer to create a complete System i-based RFID encoding and tag reading system.

In addition to all these new features, CYBRA is making a grab for market share by offering its first 100 new customers a free trade up to MarkMagic. Sheldon Reich, CYBRA's vice president of marketing, calls this the "No Pain, All Gain Trade Up." To take advantage of this offer, the users of other System i bar code "label only" software will only have to fill out a questionnaire about their user experience and pay to CYBRA the annual maintenance fee that they otherwise would have paid for their existing software.

This trade up is "no pain," says Reich, because MarkMagic Version 6 can automatically assume all label printing functionality without any user involvement whatsoever. "The customer just installs MarkMagic and the conversion is transparent to the user's application programs, requiring no changes to the source code." Once converted, the customer can then take advantage of MarkMagic's WYSIWYG designer, electronic forms including MICR checks, plastic cards, care labels, and more, without programming.

"We are making this offer for one simple reason," says Brant. "We are investing heavily in product development and we are confident that our product is the finest, easiest-to-use Auto-ID and forms software on the market. We're putting our reputation on the line offering customers of iSeries 'label only' software a far better product."