Just how many "faces" can one company have? With Microsoft, at least three.
Face the First: Microsoft, unified communications, and VoIP, continued.
Face the Second: Microsoft, Facebook, and online advertising .
Face the Third: Microsoft, RFID, and IT-enabled business infrastructures.
Say what?
RFID typically stands for "radio frequency identification," technology thought of by many as simply "bar codes on steroids." But when properly deployed, RFID tags and readers can do many interesting and useful things. These range from tracking the movements of goods during production and shipping to keeping track of laptops, server blades, vehicles and other business assets. There's at least one casino using RFID to track the time and motion patterns of drink servers, and to alert management when, for example, the arrival of a large party means it's time to open another bar station.
RFID technologies deliver useful, real-time information that can help to refine and optimize key business processes. But to date, RFID has been difficult and expensive for many companies to deploy. So how can Microsoft help? Why, by RFID-enabling its BizTalk Server offering, and working with a bunch of partners to ensure that their solutions "plug and play" with Microsoft's infrastructure, of course. Which is precisely what Microsoft has done and is doing.
Now, before you wander off, thinking that RFID doesn't apply to you or your company, a few observations. RFID is evolving in ways that require a broadened view of the technology. Frankly, the ability to track pallets of goods is far less interesting than the ability to generate real-time, accurate information about events out at the edge of the corporate network, and to use that information to refine and improve business processes. That's basically what the casino mentioned above is doing with RFID, and that's what more and more companies are starting to do with it, too.
And developments such as those at and around Microsoft are helping. RFID tags are getting smaller and more capable, while RFID readers are getting cheaper. And Microsoft, along with other infrastructure-oriented companies such as IBM, Oracle, SAP, and Sybase, are delivering solutions that make collecting and using RFID information easier. With RFID-enablement of BizTalk Server, and partnerships with RFID technology vendors and developers, Microsoft is poised to deliver infrastructure solutions that make RFID cheaper, easier, and faster to deploy, and more ready and able to deliver business value, including but far beyond the ability to locate specific shipping cases or pallets.
Also, its RFID endeavors should dovetail very nicely with its efforts in business process management, such as its Business Process Alliance, and those related to service-oriented architectures (SOAs). As Network World's John Fontana recently reported, Microsoft has big plans for integrating SOA support into multiple applications and online services.
RFID has a potentially huge role to play in many enterprise networks, and contributions to make to many corporate efforts to manage and optimize business processes, within and beyond supply chains. I'm increasingly starting to think of RFID less as a set of technologies, and more as a source of "real-time, functionally integrated data" about what's going on in and around corporate networks.
I remember when PC-based cash registers and restaurant management systems were new. There was a different make and model in almost every store and restaurant I visited. Now, almost every one I see is based on Microsoft Windows and commodity computing hardware, developments that made the solutions cheaper and easier to acquire and deploy. Similar things are afoot regarding RFID, thanks to Microsoft and its partners. Stay tuned...and let me know what you think and what your company's doing with/about RFID and/or BPM and/or SOAs. Especially if you're using or considering - or definitely not using or considering - Microsoft technologies. (Oh, and a semi-shameless plug: If you're interested in RFID, check out the "RFID Solution Selection Guide 2008" for which I am lead author. It's coming soon from Aberdeen Group, and you can read a preview of it here.)
