Innovations In Data

Over the last 50 years, Zebra Technologies has seen many industry inflection points and have been fortunate enough to benefit from each one. The common theme in these inflection points has been the continuous trend of increased mobility that ultimately empowers frontline workers. In an exclusive interview with us on its 50th anniversary, Tom Bianculli, CTO, Zebra Technologies, talks about the main driving force behind the organisation and it tech products.

- Shrikanth G

How do you see the key industry inflection points and how Zebra has evolved over the years?

Zebra’s commitment to its values, with a focus on innovation has helped us evolve from a product company to an enterprise that empowers businesses with end-to-end data-driven solutions. At Zebra, innovation is a way of life and is something that we strive to incorporate into everything we do; from the design of the most sophisticated products and solutions to the way we gather customer feedback. Over the last 50 years, we’ve seen many industry inflection points and have been fortunate enough to benefit from each one. The common theme in these inflection points has been the continuous trend of increased mobility that ultimately empowers frontline workers.

We started our journey as Data Specialisations with the first paper-tape punch to recording point of sale transactions and the first thermal based barcode printer. We then changed our name to Zebra Technologies in the 1980s to pay homage to the zebra-like stripes of the barcode. Early-on, we focused on enabling data capture in retail through barcode printing and reading by developing the industry’s first hand-held barcode readers, which initiated the concept of mobility combined with data capture. Our handheld devices provided workers with the freedom to collect data at the point of activity. We then transitioned to incorporating barcode reading into a mobile computer, which allowed workers to combine computing and applications with data capture to give way to yet another level of frontline worker productivity.