Big vendors vie for RFID dollars

With a blitz of new radio frequency identification products ready to ship, major platform vendors continue to bolster their efforts to make sure the wireless tracking technology is ready for corporate users to deploy.

This week Sun is expected to announce an upgraded version of its RFID middleware. Sun Java System RFID Software 2.0 features improved management tools designed to help users keep tabs on distributed sensor devices, along with built-in provisioning capabilities that let customers prioritize critical RFID-based processes.

Sun's news comes after a string of RFID-related announcements Oracle made last week, including a development partnership with Intel. Oracle also is teaming with RFID appliance maker Xpaseo to offer an integrated software and hardware package for managing RFID deployments.

Sybase also last week unveiled middleware designed to help companies incorporate data collected by RFID devices into business applications. RFID Enterprise bundles a range of data management, integration and analysis components, and includes hooks to a product Sybase subsidiary iAnywhere Solutions announced in February for RFID device management.

These vendors' latest product releases share an emphasis on enterprise-quality data management and integration - features that early adopters of RFID in supply chain settings are beginning to require.

Increasingly, consumer-goods companies are getting ready to make the shift from small, localized RFID pilots to multi-site rollouts as the scope and number of RFID adoption mandates from retailers such as Wal-Mart, Best Buy and Albertsons expands, says Erik Michielsen, director of RFID and ubiquitous networks at ABI Research.

"RFID installations have not been networked or tied to mission-critical enterprise systems in most cases," Michielsen says. "As companies' needs start to get more complicated, they're going to start looking for centralized management capabilities so that single-location solutions can be tied together. That's an obvious place for vendors like Microsoft, SAP, Oracle and IBM to step in and provide integration between reader devices and enterprise systems."

At the same time, RFID adoption is gaining momentum outside retail and consumer goods industries, in areas such as healthcare, pharmaceuticals, and aerospace and defense. The growth is bolstering RFID technology-spending projections and enticing big IT vendors to deepen their RFID investments.

HP, IBM, Microsoft and SAP have added steadily to their RFID wares over the past several months. Most recently, SAP in March announced a program aimed at making RFID technology accessible to small and midsize businesses. SAP is teaming with a handful of RFID vendors to add automated data collection, wireless warehouse management and RFID data integration features to its Business One suite for small and midsize companies.

For its part, IBM last fall announced a five-year, $250 million investment to support a Sensor and Actuator Solutions division and 1,000 IBM employees working on RFID software, services and hardware projects.