RFID moves from technology to a solution

By Bob Trebilcock, Editor at Large -- Modern Materials Handling, 9/20/2005

For the past years, RFID has largely been a science project. Anyone who doubts that has only to look at the number of RFID labs that have popped up in recent years to test solutions.

The industry appears poised to move from component pieces in the lab to deployable solutions.

That may be the most important news to have emerged from the conference in Atlanta last week sponsored by EPCglobal US (937-291-3300).

While many of the press releases coming out of Atlanta focused on developments around the new Gen II specifications for RFID readers, printers and tags, less noticed were the alliances and partnerships announced by some providers who want to offer a complete RFID solution.

Last June, for instance, IBM began offering a total hardware and software solution for RFID (800-426-4968).

At the EPCglobal conference, they added software solutions from OatSystems (781-907-6100) to the mix. “Our clients don’t want to play with technology,” says Ann Breidenbach, director, IBM Sensor and Actuator Solutions. “Now that they’re moving beyond the ‘can I read a tag’ mode into deployment, they want a partner who can give them total solution on a worldwide basis, that can scale according to the facility, and has the personnel to go to multiple locations.”

IBM defines a total solution as a combination of tags, readers, printers, middleware and software that can manage a business process and solve a business problem.

IBM has also recently added supply chain execution software providers MARC Global (866-703-8279) and TrueDemand (408-399-1924).

IBM is not alone in announcing RFID partnerships and alliances. HP (800-752-0900) recently formed a partnership to provide total RFID solutions with Philips Electronics (800-447-1500).

Meanwhile, Zebra Technologies (847-634-4700) announced that it was demonstrating Gen II tag and printer solutions with Texas Instruments (800-962-7343). Meanwhile, Alien Technology (866-734-3669) announced in August that it was working with Microsoft (800-642-7676) to make its tags and readers plug-and-play with Microsoft’s .NET RFID infrastructure, a network management technology Microsoft expects to bring to market next year.

"The ‘plug-and-play’ functionality and open APIs of the Microsoft RFID infrastructure enable ease of integration of the intelligent RFID reader functionality with mainstream business applications," Susan Pearson, Alien’s VP of Alliances said at the time. "We are looking forward to continued collaboration with Microsoft to enable real-time supply chain visibility."