RTX Customer Overview
Pitney Bowes started off as a small postage meter company in 1920 and has since become an international business communications corporation. Organizations use Pitney Bowes to more effectively manage staff and workloads, predict statement delivery, and enhance operational security. In particular, Pitney Bowes offers world-class process expertise that helps customers reduce mail and document costs.

The Challenge
Although the Internet has become the premier personal and business communications medium, it has not eliminated physical mail. Pitney Bowes saw a need for more intelligent, less expensive automated mail inserting machines that would enable companies to send large quantities of mail efficiently, as well as help the companies leverage their mail for new marketing and customer service goals. As Michael Critelli, the CEO of Pitney Bowes, said in USA Today, “We call the bill a monthly appointment with the customer. You know they're going to open it. That's the time to include inserts or put messages directly on the bill or refer customers to a Web site. They could send a DVD or CD with the bill. It's all about connecting with the customer, cross selling or selling up, and it is not being used to the fullest degree.” In the past, these automated mail insertion machines would use a two-tiered control system. A Windowsbased computer would handle the addressing functions, interfacing to external systems and provide an intuitive user interface to the operator while a separate, Unix based real-time computer would control all of the servo motors used to move the mail and insert it into the envelope. Pitney Bowes wanted to eliminate the need for dual computers while keeping their customer’s costs low, and they needed a robust, dependable real-time operating system to make the insertion process work properly.

The IntervalZero Solution
Pitney Bowes thought it had found a real-time product that would work for them, but they soon discovered the product and its development tools were no longer supported. As a result, the product could not support the latest computing hardware and features such as MMX and hyper-threading, which Pitney Bowes desired for its new insertion machine, the Flexible Productivity System (FPS). Pitney Bowes selected RTX because it allowed them to preserve its significant investment in Windows-based code and offered superior real-time performance and other benefits to the Flexible Productivity Series. RTX enabled Pitney Bowes to hit the price point it needed for the FPS market and it allowed them to operate the machine with a single computer. An added benefit for Pitney Bowes was that RTX let them consolidate their software development tool sets. They previously had two development groups for their insertion product lines, one working in Windows and the other in Unix. Because RTX fully supports Microsoft’s Visual Studio, Pitney Bowes was able to combine their developers into one team that uses Visual Studio for all their work. Pitney Bowes was able to cut its PC hardware costs in half, reduce its development costs and thereby reduce its customers costs. Most important, RTX provides Pitney Bowes with a dependable platform to carry their product line into the future. RTX enables Pitney Bowes to leverage the latest advances in PC hardware while satisfying the cost-consciousness of its customers.

For More Information
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