Planning to survive RFID

Radio frequency identification (RFID) technology is not new, but the huge groundswell of interest in response to the potential to revolutionise business processes has been driven by a maturity in the technology to gather real-time information and gradually falling costs of production.

Although RFID has been around for over 50 years, it has failed to elicit much business interest until recent times when technology developers have been able to begin removing the limitations of RFID tags and scanners.

For this reason, much of the focus in recent times has been on the technology used to transmit and read data, particularly as companies like SA`s iPico continue to push the boundaries.

As recently as last month, iPico announced the development of a new dual-frequency RFID technology aimed at overcoming range, speed and electromagnetic interference limitations of low frequency systems and the poor penetration of objects with high moisture or carbon content by high-frequency systems.

The dual-frequency system overcomes the limitations of earlier RFID technology by combining the penetration of low frequencies with the high-speed data carrying ability of high frequencies.

Slowly but surely the barriers to effective data transmission using RFID are being removed. However, one of the biggest concerns about RFID beyond being able to transmit data is how all this data can be captured, stored and converted into meaningful information that can be used to augment business processes.

Although the technological advances have been grabbing the headlines, it was evident at a recent gathering of Oracle customers and partners from the European, African and Middle East region that software developers are also working with the RFID revolution in mind.

Oracle has been getting real about the future by recognising that in any environment there will be a variety of RFID sensors that will all generate data that will require processing and storage.

Allyson Fryhoff, Oracle`s business development VP specialising in RFID, does not believe there will be the data avalanche or uncontrolled explosion of data predicted by some. However, she agrees there will be an increase in the volume being generated. This increased volume of data will need to be correlated to provide information to guide business processes.

Oracle has responded to the challenge of increased data volumes and breaking data out of isolated silos in several ways. These include adding a special component to its Application Server 10g product for picking up, filtering and viewing collected data as well as adding a new electronic product code data type to the Oracle database to expand the amount of data that can be stored using such codes.

Oracle, therefore, is deliberately laying the groundwork to be able to reap the benefits of RFID as adoption of the technology gains momentum. In an equally pragmatic approach, Oracle has avoided backing any one the emerging RFID standards.

Although no one seems willing or able to put any time frame on it, there seems little doubt in the software industry that the demand for RFID capability will come.

Warwick Ashford, technology editor, ITWeb

Fryhoff agrees that the adoption of a world standard will be important to the adoption of RFID in international supply chains, but admits Oracle is working with a number of standards bodies. She says Oracle technology is being designed to support whatever standard users want to employ.

Having established a base framework for dealing with RFID-based data, Fryhoff says Oracle is moving towards complete integration of RFID into all its products and also working to develop solutions for vertical industries that are likely to use RFID in particular ways.

It is probably safe to assume many other software developers are following Oracle`s approach in preparing to look at data in a different way with the promise to consumers of being able to reorganise business processes using RFID to achieve maximum efficiency.

Although no one seems willing or able to put any time frame on it, there seems little doubt in the software industry that the demand for RFID capability will come. In fact, many are banking on it, particularly those like Oracle which are spending money to ensure they will be ready for the wave of demand when it comes.

What remains to be seen, is how many business software makers will have planned for an RFID-based environment sufficiently enough to ensure their survival in the new era of real-time data gathering to achieve business process efficiency.

That`s assuming, of course, that RFID matures as expected and is not superseded by some still unknown technology.

RFID could be the biggest marketing opportunity in decades for business application developers, but at the same time it could be their biggest gamble.