Middleware Players Eye RFID

Specialized software to ease the strain of Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) deployments on backend data centers is going to be big, experts say.

Last night, for example, software vendor BEA Systems Inc. (Nasdaq: BEAS) revealed its own plans to break into the RFID market during its annual earnings call (see BEA Reports & Hires).

Alfred Chuang, the companys CEO explained that the software firm will launch a new Web server product, codenamed RipCurl, which is designed specifically to meet the backend requirements of RFID. This will be available during the first half of this year, he added.

This could be a shrewd move. BEA, like a number of other software vendors, is feeling the squeeze in its licensing revenues, hence the need to explore new markets. Last year analyst firm Gartner Inc.

warned that there will be slow growth in the software space until around 2006 and blamed falling license sales for the financial shortfall many vendors are experiencing (see Software Slump Is Deal Time).

For these reasons, BEA is not the only company setting out its RFID stall. IBM Corp. (NYSE: IBM), for example, has already adapted its popular WebSphere middleware product to monitor RFID-related activity.Over in Dallas, Texas, Sun Microsystems Inc. (Nasdaq: SUNW) has built its own RFID Test Center, and is now touting its Java System RFID software.

Of course, these initiatives are about more than just selling technology. Overhauling an entire supply chain of warehouses, pallets, boxes, and partner systems is no small undertaking and there are some serious services and consulting bucks to be made.

RFID has been much hyped over the last few years, although retailers and manufacturers are only now starting to get to grips with the technology. Supermarket giant Walmart, for example, gave its top 100 suppliers a January 1st deadline for RFID compliance.

The technology works by using tags, on either a specific product or package, which emit radio signals. "Reader" devices then pick up these signals, enabling the products to be tracked. Previously, businesses relied on barcode readers to keep track of their wares; RFID technology does not require direct contact or what is known as "line-of-sight" scanning.

So, that’s the good news, but the bad news is that keeping track of all this data is going to put a lot of pressure on your backend servers and storage. Mark Blowers, senior analyst at Butler Group explains, “The strain on your storage, in particular, will be huge,” he says. This is because stock movements could potentially generate millions of transactions, and this new data needs to be dealt with, he adds.This is where software to tie all these systems together, known as middleware, comes in. “The middleware will summarize the information, and manage the reader devices and RFID tags,” says Blowers.

Up until this point, most RFID rollouts have been pilot projects, although now it looks as if software vendors are waking up to new market opportunities.

Analyst firm Forrester Research Inc. has also identified the growing need for RFID middleware. However, in a research note produced last year, the research company warned that this must include a balanced combination of core infrastructure and packaged application features including device management, integration, data management and business logic.

Another potential hurdle in the path of RFID is the ability of chip manufacturers to keep the tagging technology’s price point down. “The manufacturing has to be at such a high volume that the price point per chip is so low that it can be used in large quantities,” says Carl Gage, principal at Lexford Capital.

Blowers agrees. “You will have to get the costs of the chips down to pennies before you can deploy thousands [of them],” he says.Nonetheless, both experts see RFID's prospects as rosy. “RFID is one of those technologies whose application is coming into its own in the next five years,” says Gage. “The major retailers and wholesalers want to know where their product is.”

— James Rogers, Site Editor, Next-Gen Data Center Forum