Our panel at the MIT Club last week had four panelists representing varied points of view. Jon Chorley from Oracle and Ray Blanchard formerly from SAP supported existing enterprise applications and networks. Anurag Mendhekar from Blue Vector Systems voiced support for new, highly distributed networks required to support RFID. All three of these panelists were focused on passive tags in supply chains as in the Wal-Mart mandate. Blair LaCorte from Savi balanced the panel by focusing on applications for active tags that also incorporate other identification technologies such as Global Positioning Systems (GPS).
More background on each panelist can be found on the MIT Club of Northern California Web site.
Jon Chorley claimed that RFID is all about data. Gathering and leveraging RFID related data will create large, complex databases that require complex queries. Customers will look to their existing application and platform partners for solutions. Generally, new applications for RFID will be implemented by extending these applications and platforms. There is a window for new products from new Pure Play companies, but that window will close fast, in two years or less.
Both Chorley and Ray Blanchard spoke extensively about the hype around the Wal-Mart and Department of Defense mandates. Blanchard provided a long list of the other major retailers who are starting RFID initiatives similar to Wal-Mart. Both indicated that any significant failure in these big deployments could set back RFID adoption in supply chains for years.
Anurag Mendhekar described the RFID Router and RFID Network Appliance from his startup company. These networked products will provide standardized interfaces near the edge of highly distributed networks and also provide easy building blocks for big deployments. In recent presentations, Cisco has been echoing some of these strategies. The other three panelists voiced disagreement with this approach. There was agreement that RFID readers would become commodities, but no agreement on how readers would be connected to centralized repositories for storing and leveraging RFID-generated information.
Blair LaCorte spoke about Savi’s products for tracking shipping containers. Savi is working with the U.S. Government to implement Smart and Secure Tradelanes, an initiative to secure shipping routes involving 46 countries and over 200 ports. Beyond this, LaCorte talked about using active tags for creating intelligent devices. The panelists generally embraced the idea of embedding RFID tags in personal possessions such as consumer electronics products. We understand the consumer benefits of such tagging.
A considerable amount of time was devoted to issues of privacy. We all discussed the Chinese government’s plan to require RFID-based identity cards for all citizens and readers for all police officers. We also discussed the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) and their plan for embedding RFID and biometrics in passports.
Concerns about mandated identity cards with RFID were well understood by the panelists and audience. On the other hand, complaints about simple passive tags in clothing and other consumer goods were considered overblown. As both pilots and full deployments have shown, consumers will embrace applications that dramatically increase convenience. Applications including SpeedPass commerce and EasyPass toll collection are embraced because they save time, even though consumers have to trust vendors with information about their purchasing and commuting behavior.
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