I received a news flash this morning from M2M Magazine announcing that Axeda has acquired Questra.

From the announcement:

“The remote-service world experienced major consolidation today, as Axeda Corp., Foxboro, Mass., announced its acquisition of competitor Questra Corp., Redwood City, Calif.”

More here

M2M Magazine has just announced M2M Connected World 2009. Dates are June 9 – 12, 2009, Downtown Chicago.

From the announcement:

“M2M magazine developed this unique industry event five years ago to promote the emerging machine-to-machine market and provide a gathering place for industry stakeholders.

M2M Connected World is far from being a typical conference or tradeshow. Designed to provide an environment for networking and education, M2M Connected World is a collection of innovative activities focused on improving market awareness and cohesiveness, both among individual technology providers as well as corporate adopters.

Additional information and registration will be available shortly. Please check back again to learn more about M2M Connected World.”

Englewood, CO—June 18, 2008 – M2M Data Corporation, a leading provider of Internet-based Intelligent Services, today announced a new and significant commitment to the upstream energy market targeted at exploration and production companies.>

M2M Data Corporation will offer its iSCADA® turnkey hosted suite of monitoring, control and alerting services to energy producers allowing them to monitor flow computers, compressors, tank batteries, artificial lift devices and other related surface equipment.

Producers review and graph individual wells and devices, create customized reports and export data to a wide variety of software programs and back office systems, as well as customize their website layout to view any group of wells.

This added functionality to M2M Data Corporation’s existing suite of services allows producers to make real-time operational adjustments which lower operational costs, reduce downtime, improve safety, and increase production.

Exploration and production customers will also benefit from M2M’s suite of optional add-on services which include Preventive Maintenance Management, Machinery Analysis, Field Data Collection, Resource Optimization, and a hosted Control Center. These services are supported by a 24×7 Network Operating Center and customer support staff.

Matt Begler, M2M Data Corporation’s Vice President of Sales, said, “We’re excited to be extending our services to the upstream sector of the oil and gas industry and are committed to helping our customers achieve operational excellence. We welcome Jim Bell to our company as an Oil and Gas Sales Engineer who brings in-depth producer-based remote monitoring sales experience and is specifically tasked to support this market.”

iServices™ are rapidly deployed, managed machine-to-machine communications services that allow machine owners to monitor, manage, and optimize their operations. The service is provided on a turnkey basis including communication services with minimal or no capital expense, and is backed by a service level guarantee.

Computerworld has a story today about Microsoft’s plans to expand its Windows Embedded family of operating systems to fight increasing competition from Linux.

“Microsoft Corp. today announced plans to rejigger and expand its Windows Embedded family of operating systems in an attempt to enlist developers of handhelds and other devices to help the software vendor combat increasing competition from Linux.

For example, Microsoft is developing new versions of Windows Embedded CE and Windows XP Embedded, its two primary embedded operating system lines, that will be rebranded as Windows Embedded Compact and Windows Embedded Standard, respectively. An upgrade of the XP software is scheduled to launch on June 3, and a next-generation CE release will follow next year, said Ilya Bukshteyn, director of marketing for Windows Embedded.”