The New RuBee Standard: A Win for Everyone, Including RFID Vendors and Users...IF...

RFID has many advantages, but suffers from some key disadvantages as well. RuBee, a conceptually similar but technologically different tool set, is seen by many as an alternative to RFID that offers greater security and higher performance in harsh environments.

These are good things. But RuBee had not been based on any widely adopted industry standards. Until now. The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), “the world's largest technical professional society” and heavy hitters in the IT standards world, just announced approval of IEEE 1902.1, its “Standard for Long Wavelength Wireless Network Protocol.” The standard improves upon RuBee as implemented to date, in part by supporting an addressing scheme much like that used by the Internet Protocol (IP) and World Wide Web. Compliant networks can be managed with simple, inexpensive hardware, and properly configured RuBee tags can be searched for and monitored over the Internet using already familiar search engines.

So RuBee is poised for broader and rapid adoption by hardware and software makers seeking markets beyond RFID, which has not yet created any generators of sustained high profit margins and revenues that I can find. (But that's a separate discussion – one which I intend to start right here very soon.) The next two immediate challenges, then, are these.

1. Can the nascent RuBee industry resist the admittedly strong temptation to position RuBee primarily or exclusively as a competitor to RFID, instead of something to be considered and deployed both instead of and alongside RFID? If so, then RFID users and solution providers will be more likely able to leverage their experiences, best practices, and incumbent management solutions while embracing RuBee, to the benefit of all. If not, well, it'll be a lot like HD-DVD versus Blu-Ray, or Beta versus VHS all over again, to no one's benefit.

2. Can the RFID/RuBee /“visibility network”/sensor-based network community/communities and markets focus on the high-level business benefits users seek when deploying RFID, RuBee, or almost anything else related to visibility of and knowledge about business-critical assets? If so, then RuBee offers users and solution providers new opportunities for success in everything from integration of RFID and RuBee tag data with key operational applications to RFID- and RuBee-enabled and -aware IT infrastructure management solutions and services. If not, well, it'll be a lot like the examples cited above, and again, to no one's benefit.

Back in 1996, I wrote and designed my first ad for a major industry publication (Computerworld). It was promoting the fact that AIM Technology, a provider of independent system performance benchmarks and bestower of the annual “Hot Iron” Awards, was for the first time honoring systems running the then-new Microsoft Windows NT server operating system, as well as those running UNIX. My ad idea? A slice of bread split down the middle, with peanut butter on the left side and jelly on the right. The headline read “Can you imagine peanut butter versus jelly?” The copy argued that while much press and vendor hoopla focused on Windows NT-UNIX “competition,” the fact was that users were succeeding with IT environments that included both, because each did different things really well.

RFID, RuBee, and their coming successors are now exactly like Windows NT and UNIX were then. If solution providers, systems integrators, vendors, their partners, and the punditocracy stay focused on what users care about – using the best technologies to track what they care about and improve business processes – there will be more than enough market potential to go around. Otherwise, RuBee will quickly become as relatively marginalized and financially lackluster as RFID has been to date in too many market segments. It's up to us – and in the spirit of the recent presidential election here in the U.S., the RuBee standard is a potential clarion call for “change we can believe in.”