Wanna start some static? Tell people with a vested interest in a particular technology-centric industry that you fear users won't care about it after next year.
Want a specific example? How about, oh, I don't know -- RFID?
On Nov. 30, I posted a Brief at Focus, where I work, entitled "RFID on 2010: Will Anyone Care (Who Doesn't Work for an RFID Company, That Is)?" You can read the whole thing at http://bit.ly/RFIDin2010. Here's an excerpt.
"If significant improvement in integration and simplicity does not pervade the RFID industry throughout 2010, that year could be the last one in which very many people outside of the RFID community care anything about RFID. And indicators to date are not promising. ...Granted that the current worldwide economic unpleasantness has not helped. But there is still ample circumstantial evidence to cause concern about the future of the RFID industry. Those concerned should be watching developments throughout 2010 very closely – to decide whether to continue doing so or not in 2011 and beyond."
Well, I got comments almost immediately. Some excerpts of these follow. "Michael, good piece and perhaps a wake-up call for the industry," said Mark Roberti, founder and owner of "RFID Journal." "RFID needs to be simpler to deploy and more focused on complete solutions," he added.
"Your article is a little bleak but I understand the point that RFID has seen a lot of unfulfilled potential," Kurt Mensch, Principal Product Manager at Intermec, a vendor that I think "gets it" where RFID is concerned. "I think we'll see a lot more collaboration in the coming years with more focus on the business benefits and less focus on the 'feeds and speeds.'"
There's more, but I think you get the idea. If you have any interest in RFID at all, please go to http://bit.ly/RFIDin2010, read my Focus Brief, then post some comments, and let's make some more discussion happen. Maybe we WILL wake someone up!
Showing posts with label sensor-based networks. Show all posts
Showing posts with label sensor-based networks. Show all posts
Thursday, December 3, 2009
Monday, May 18, 2009
What if RFID Hardware Were Free?
According to a May 11 article at the Japanese business news site Nikkei.com (registration and paid subscription required; free trial period available) NEC Corp. plans to start taking orders in July for new RFID tag reader/writers. The new systems will be compatible with all major worldwide radio communications standards, and priced at less than 10 percent of today's prices for comparable systems, according to “company sources,” Nikkei.com said.
Unspecified improvements in semiconductor design and manufacturing techniques enable NEC to sell its new reader/writers for approximately 10,000 yen (or just over US$100 at current exchange rates) each for orders of 10,000 units or more. Further, NEC “has developed servers and software that can read and write several tens of thousands of pieces of data per second, which it will lease to clients using RFID tags,” Nikkei.com reported.
“The company aims to generate 100 billion yen in sales within the next five years by selling the reader/writer and leasing servers and software,” according to the Nikkei.com article. The report adds that NEC plans to focus on growing RFID use beyond traditional supply chain and asset-tracking applications, particularly in the retail sector.
Two reactions.
Reaction One: Nice innovation chops, NEC (assuming that the reports from the usually reliable Nikkei Group are accurate, of course).
Reaction Two: So what?
Cheaper tags, readers and writers and bigger, faster read volumes can only go so far. (This is a lesson being learned by many RFID vendors even as you read this. And that includes at least some of those pursuing the “RFID as a service” go-to-market approach, where they own and manage the infrastructure and users pay monthly usage fees.) The savvy users and vendors I've worked with agree about what's really needed to make RFID a truly significant, sustainable, mainstream set of technologies. Herewith, a summary.
Affordability – of the whole solution, not just the hardware, and especially including interoperability and integration (about which more just after the next item).
Reliability – as defined and measured by users' business requirements and not just any particular vendor's particular silo.
Interoperability – of solutions with one another and with incumbent IT solutions and relevant processes and operations, as well as “fork-lift-free” integration of all relevant data, technologies, and operations.
Scalability of all solutions – both up and down.
Economic stability and transparency of all vendors and partners involved in the user's value chain – and an easy, low-cost exit strategy, should a particular vendor or technology go away or cease being appropriate for any reason.
Even if hardware and software were free and infinitely capacious, unanswered questions about the other above issues would still keep many users away from RFID (and other potentially critical and transformational technologies, such as SaaS and cloud computing). And this is as it should be.
Users, in fact, should treat the above considerations as a bare-bones version of a “bill of rights” they deserve to have upheld by every vendor hoping to do business with them. And vendors should consider them the minimum buy-in required to gain and keep users' business and trust. Because it's each user's business that lives, dies, or thrives by how well solutions such as RFID actually work to improve agility, competitiveness, and profitability. And helping more users thrive is how technology-centric markets such as that for RFID are grown and sustained.
So whether user or vendor, you and your colleagues should “ARISE” (it's not just an acronym – it's a mnemonic!) and support the above goals, altruistically, pragmatically, cynically, or otherwise. Whatever your reasons, the effects will be a stronger, more vibrant market and more solutions that actually deliver benefit and value – and that actually sell.
Not that I have any strong feelings about these things, you understand...
Unspecified improvements in semiconductor design and manufacturing techniques enable NEC to sell its new reader/writers for approximately 10,000 yen (or just over US$100 at current exchange rates) each for orders of 10,000 units or more. Further, NEC “has developed servers and software that can read and write several tens of thousands of pieces of data per second, which it will lease to clients using RFID tags,” Nikkei.com reported.
“The company aims to generate 100 billion yen in sales within the next five years by selling the reader/writer and leasing servers and software,” according to the Nikkei.com article. The report adds that NEC plans to focus on growing RFID use beyond traditional supply chain and asset-tracking applications, particularly in the retail sector.
Two reactions.
Reaction One: Nice innovation chops, NEC (assuming that the reports from the usually reliable Nikkei Group are accurate, of course).
Reaction Two: So what?
Cheaper tags, readers and writers and bigger, faster read volumes can only go so far. (This is a lesson being learned by many RFID vendors even as you read this. And that includes at least some of those pursuing the “RFID as a service” go-to-market approach, where they own and manage the infrastructure and users pay monthly usage fees.) The savvy users and vendors I've worked with agree about what's really needed to make RFID a truly significant, sustainable, mainstream set of technologies. Herewith, a summary.
Affordability – of the whole solution, not just the hardware, and especially including interoperability and integration (about which more just after the next item).
Reliability – as defined and measured by users' business requirements and not just any particular vendor's particular silo.
Interoperability – of solutions with one another and with incumbent IT solutions and relevant processes and operations, as well as “fork-lift-free” integration of all relevant data, technologies, and operations.
Scalability of all solutions – both up and down.
Economic stability and transparency of all vendors and partners involved in the user's value chain – and an easy, low-cost exit strategy, should a particular vendor or technology go away or cease being appropriate for any reason.
Even if hardware and software were free and infinitely capacious, unanswered questions about the other above issues would still keep many users away from RFID (and other potentially critical and transformational technologies, such as SaaS and cloud computing). And this is as it should be.
Users, in fact, should treat the above considerations as a bare-bones version of a “bill of rights” they deserve to have upheld by every vendor hoping to do business with them. And vendors should consider them the minimum buy-in required to gain and keep users' business and trust. Because it's each user's business that lives, dies, or thrives by how well solutions such as RFID actually work to improve agility, competitiveness, and profitability. And helping more users thrive is how technology-centric markets such as that for RFID are grown and sustained.
So whether user or vendor, you and your colleagues should “ARISE” (it's not just an acronym – it's a mnemonic!) and support the above goals, altruistically, pragmatically, cynically, or otherwise. Whatever your reasons, the effects will be a stronger, more vibrant market and more solutions that actually deliver benefit and value – and that actually sell.
Not that I have any strong feelings about these things, you understand...
Friday, January 30, 2009
Why RFID Matters -- and to Whom (including You!)
Why are American Apparel, South America's Falabella, BGN, a major book retailer in the Netherlands, Office Depot superstores in Canada, and other retailers around the world attaching Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) tags to every item in many of its stores? Especially since retailers tend to be risk- and cost-averse, sometimes especially where technology is concerned? Why, to improve customer service, inventory accuracy, and employee productivity. (The fewer customers who can't find what they want, the more happy customers. The fewer employees and hours needed to count items manually, the more time and people available to help those customers.)
What is a business? Well, basically, by my lights, every business is a constantly shifting mix of two primary resources: information and process. (Every person at every business I've ever seen plays a role that is a combination of these resources as well, so people are included within this admittedly nearly absurdist reduction.)
So what is one of IT's primary reasons for existing, and spending/costing so much of the business' money? Why, to make available information that drives continual improvement of business processes, of course.
Which leads to my take on RFID (an area for which I led coverage at Aberdeen Group from late 2007 through early 2009, and which I've followed for years). My surveys and interviews of many, many users and discussions with a bunch of vendors have led to some basic beliefs I think you'll find directly relevant to your considerations of business process management, business knowledge management, and perhaps many other related areas.
When a discussion of RFID focuses on “radio frequency identification” and its many, many technological variants, that discussion, many if not most times, is already off course. Because unless they work for RFID companies, most business executives I've met couldn't possibly care any less about RFID's technological minutiae and their respective strengths and weaknesses.
So why is RFID important, to retailers and a bunch of other businesses, including many that don't know it yet? Because of what it can mean to the business – real-time, fully integrated data. The more you can know about what's going on at the edge of your network the closer to when it's actually going on, the more opportunities you have to inform, refine and optimize business processes.
RFID and other sensor-based and data-generating network edge technologies can feed the operational applications at the core of just about any business – if the IT infrastructure supporting that business is ready, that is. This means that infrastructure must be designed, deployed, and managed in ways that minimize “time to information.” This is the time and effort required to convert data, whatever its source, into information business applications and users can actually use and act upon in a timely fashion.
So what should you do? If your business and its value chain depend on being able to track valuable assets, or know what's going on out at the network edge, in real time or near-real time, you might want to devote some attention to the latest developments and user experiences regarding RFID, in your industry and perhaps others as well. I'll do my best to help, here and directly with you, if you but drop me a line.
(Note: This is an updated and expanded version of a blog entry I originally wrote for ebizQ, but since I couldn't get the supposed link to the original version to work anyway, I decided to revise and re-post it here. Ah, modern technology...)
What is a business? Well, basically, by my lights, every business is a constantly shifting mix of two primary resources: information and process. (Every person at every business I've ever seen plays a role that is a combination of these resources as well, so people are included within this admittedly nearly absurdist reduction.)
So what is one of IT's primary reasons for existing, and spending/costing so much of the business' money? Why, to make available information that drives continual improvement of business processes, of course.
Which leads to my take on RFID (an area for which I led coverage at Aberdeen Group from late 2007 through early 2009, and which I've followed for years). My surveys and interviews of many, many users and discussions with a bunch of vendors have led to some basic beliefs I think you'll find directly relevant to your considerations of business process management, business knowledge management, and perhaps many other related areas.
When a discussion of RFID focuses on “radio frequency identification” and its many, many technological variants, that discussion, many if not most times, is already off course. Because unless they work for RFID companies, most business executives I've met couldn't possibly care any less about RFID's technological minutiae and their respective strengths and weaknesses.
So why is RFID important, to retailers and a bunch of other businesses, including many that don't know it yet? Because of what it can mean to the business – real-time, fully integrated data. The more you can know about what's going on at the edge of your network the closer to when it's actually going on, the more opportunities you have to inform, refine and optimize business processes.
RFID and other sensor-based and data-generating network edge technologies can feed the operational applications at the core of just about any business – if the IT infrastructure supporting that business is ready, that is. This means that infrastructure must be designed, deployed, and managed in ways that minimize “time to information.” This is the time and effort required to convert data, whatever its source, into information business applications and users can actually use and act upon in a timely fashion.
So what should you do? If your business and its value chain depend on being able to track valuable assets, or know what's going on out at the network edge, in real time or near-real time, you might want to devote some attention to the latest developments and user experiences regarding RFID, in your industry and perhaps others as well. I'll do my best to help, here and directly with you, if you but drop me a line.
(Note: This is an updated and expanded version of a blog entry I originally wrote for ebizQ, but since I couldn't get the supposed link to the original version to work anyway, I decided to revise and re-post it here. Ah, modern technology...)
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