SAP, Infineon unveil RFID management system
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The RFID platform is based on SAP's NetWeaver integration and application server middleware, including the software vendor's Auto-ID Infrastructure and SAP Event Management applications, and on Infineon's You-R ...
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Next-generation RF tags touted as a way to boost network security.
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SAP has unwrapped a new on-demand business software platform targeted at midsize companies (100 to 500 employees) looking to simplify their I.T. requirements while improving the efficiency and flexibility of their business processes.
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German semiconductor manufacturer Infineon  said on Tuesday it signed an agreement to develop a new multi-mode, single-chip 3G radio frequency (RF) transceiver based on its own SMARTi UE chip.
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Intermec Technologies on Monday unveiled a prototype version of a multi-protocol RFID printer in its PM 4i Smart Printer product line at the Frontline Solutions Conference & Exposition in Chicago. Company officials said it is the first multi-protocol printer in the market.
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(Source: AT&T)  RFID: A Business Revolution Providing Strategic and Competitive Advancements in radio frequency identification technology are causing big changes in supply chain management.
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Sept. 13, 2004- UPM Rafsec , the RFID subsidiary of Finland's UPM-Kymmene Corp., has unveiled today its first commercial line of RFID labels made with EPC-compliant UHF tags at Frontline Solutions Conference ...
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RF Code has unveiled a device for tracking assets with active RFID tags that can be worn on the belt, transferring the data wirelessly to a BlackBerry or Windows Mobile device.
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This week ObjectStore, a provider of technology designed to manage massive amounts of data in real time, will unveil RFID Accelerator. The company aims to give to supply chain capabilities similar to those used by financial institutions for executing programmatic trades on the stock exchange.Â
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The software, developed by IBM&#39;s new Sensors and Actuators business unit, is designed to help businesses collect and act on data from RFID and other sensor-based technology.
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Wal-Mart says 500 new stores and clubs will roll out RFID for case- and pallet-level tracking before the end of the fiscal year.
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Hewlett-Packard Co., one of the &quot;initial eight&quot; product distributors in the Wal-Mart RFID trials, will unveil on Monday pacts with systems integrator BearingPoint Inc.
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(InfoWorld) - IAnywhere SolutionsÂ is adding location tracking capabilities and support for a wider range of sensor technologies in RFID Anywhere 3.0, the latest version of its sensor management software announced on Monday. The previous versions of RFID Anywhere allowed customers to collect data from RFID (radio frequency identification) tags, create reports with that data and integrate the data with other enterprise applications. With the latest version of the software platform, companies can collect more data including location and environmental information from a variety of technologies including active RFID, passive RFID, RTLS (Real Time Location System) and barcode into a single reporting and tracking system. Previously, customers using a variety of sensor and tracking mechanisms would use separate management software tools to monitor each technology, said Martyn Mallick, director of RFID and mobile solutions for iAnywhere. Passive RFID is theÂ technology used by Wal-Mart StoresÂ and other retailers to track products or pallets of products as they move through the distribution system. Active RFID chips can hold more data and can be read from a greater distance. RTLS is used primarily to track and find items, such as computers or medical equipment. RTLS sensors often communicate with Wi-Fi networks. RFID Anywhere 3.0 users can also collect environmental data. Some active RFID tags now include light, temperature and humidity sensors, Mallick said. By collecting that data along with tracking and location information, users can make better business decisions, he said. For example, a produce shipper can decide to send a load of lettuce that has been exposed to above-optimum temperatures to a local retailer where it can be bought and consumed quickly, rather than send it across the country, potentially taking days for it to reach store shelves. RFID Anywhere 3.0 is integrated with existing RTLS location and active RFID systems, collecting data from software from Ekahau, AeroScout, RF Code, and others. Collecting information from thousands of tags can produce an overwhelming amount of data, but RFID Anywhere allows users to set parameters to help control the flow. "The most important thing we recommend really to customers is that not all the data is valuable," Mallick said. "Typically 75 percent to 80 percent of data can be filtered out because it's not of value." Some data may only be useful for one or two days, after which it can be deleted. Other data doesn't actually need to be collected. For example, if a product is sitting on a shelf, its sensor doesn't need to repeatedly send data saying that it hasn't moved. The sensor reader can instead be programmed only to send data once the product moves, he said. RFID Anywhere 3.0 will become available later this month. Customers can deploy the software in as many sites as they want, paying based on how many data collection devices are connected to the network.
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DECEMBER 15, 2004 (IDG NEWS SERVICE) - SAP AG said today that it&#39;s offering customers a new service to ensure the security of SAP systems.
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(InfoWorld) - Enterprise applications vendor SAP and networking company Cisco Systems are touting their new marketingÂ alliance on governance, risk, and complianceÂ (GRC) business processes as a major milestone in their 18-month-old partnership. "This puts together two giants in their fields," Shai Agassi, president, product and technology group at SAP, said during a Wednesday conference call. "It allows us to look at the GRC problem from top down with [SAP's] processes and information, and from the bottom up with [Cisco's] network and infrastructure, and then connect up the dots." The two companies firmly cemented their budding friendship in May 2005 whenÂ Cisco signed up to licenseÂ SAP's service-oriented architecture (SOA) platform known as Enterprise Services Architecture (ESA). Since that time, the vendors have been discussing a variety of areas for cooperation, but the move to team up on GRC announced Wednesday was driven by their customers, according to Doug Merritt, executive vice president and general manager of SAP's suite optimization products and technology group. Some 80 percent of SAP's customers also use Cisco technology. The move brings together SAP's upcoming trio of new GRC applications with Cisco's service-oriented network architecture (SONA), whichÂ debuted in December. SONA aims to link together all the IT resources in an enterprise's network including servers and storage, building more intelligence into the network through the use of services that operate across all the resources. The new SAP products are GRC Repository and GRC Process Control, due out on Nov. 30, and GRC Risk Management expected to ship sometime in December. Cisco hopes to come out with tools and adaptors to make it easier for customers to use the GRC/Sona combination in the same time frame, said Bill Ruh, vice president of advanced services at Cisco. The relationship is initially focused on SAP and Cisco working with customers and partners in the U.S. and Canada, but the vendors plans to expand the deal to include other geographies, Merritt said. When SAP's products appear later this year, they will be available globally. The vendor has yet to release pricing for the new GRC applications and although it's offering them as separate products, Merritt expects them mostly to be bundled with existing GRC applications such as Compliance Calibrator and Firefighter. SAP is planning other third-party vendor partnership announcements around its GRC offerings, but its executives Wednesday kept emphasizing the "unique" nature of the tie-up with Cisco. Over the past four to five months, the two companies have been working on integrating Cisco's network infrastructure with SAP's application infrastructure. They're also defining use cases or real-life scenarios for deploying the GRC/Sona technology combination, Merritt said. So far, the vendors have developed four to five scenarios, in the areas of how best to ensure confidential data like Social Security numbers is not deliberately or inadvertently leaked within or outside a company and around customer support service level agreements. In recent years, SAP has committed to more collaboration with other IT vendors, Merritt said. "SAP has really changed its stripes; that's hard for a grown tiger to do," he added. For the moment, the GRC Repository is full of SAP compliance policies, but the vendor's keen to establish "an open ecosystem" around the product, encouraging vendors and customers to populate the repository themselves. Merritt expects SAP to make a number of additionalÂ GRC announcementsÂ before year-end where customers will commit to help "prime the pump" for content for the repository, he said. Cisco's Ruh agreed. "Within the repository we can see our policies interacting those of our partners and of SAP; there will be a lot of synergies," he added.
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RFID tags, the dime-sized devices that can track inventory from the factory to the store, are being embraced as one of the hottest of new technologies. But Patrick J. Sweeney II likens most available applications of RFID, or radio frequency identification, to the user-unfriendly personal computers of the 1980s: a blank screen and a command prompt.
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(InfoWorld) - SAP AG unwrapped its Enterprise Search application to help customers conduct specific secure queries of structured and unstructured data held in both SAP and non-SAP software. The vendor announced the search application Tuesday at its TechEd developer conference in Las Vegas during a flurry of announcements promoting innovation and simplicity. "We can do deep searches into enterprise data," Peter Graf, executive vice president of solution marketing for SAP, said during a conference call to discuss the news. "We can leverage all the knowledge we have about a user from [SAP] applications in terms of their preferences, roles and authorization for what information they can see." For instance, an individual within a company could carry out queries around the organization's corporate structure as to who reports to whom or determine which of their peers are experts in technologies like Java, he added. The aim is to make enterprise search tied to business context accessible to nontechnical users for a "Google-like" searching capability, according to Graf. "You don't need a very long learning experience to use Enterprise Search," he said. Formerly known as Project Argo, the application runs on SAP's NetWeaver 2004s integration platform. The underlying indexing engine is SAP's existing Trex search technology combined with newly developed search capabilities. SAP developers can download a free trial version of Enterprise Search now from the company'sÂ SAP Developer Network (SDN) Web site. The company plans to make the application commercially available in 2007, at which point SAP will release pricing details. Developers will be able to adjust Enterprise Search so they can use the application to search non-SAP applications, Graf said. They will also be able to embed search capabilities in other applications and create new search services. Enterprise Search has open interfaces so it can hook into third-party information sources and search engines. SAP plans for Enterprise Search to support a number of different user interfaces. The vendor will make the application available as a browser-based user interface for simple Web search and as a desktop widget embedded in its mySAP ERP 2005 enterprise resource planning application. SAP also intends to offer Enterprise Search as an enhancement to its Business Intelligence Accelerator (BIA) product. Graf stressed that Enterprise Search and BIA are complementary technologies, both using in-memory capabilities and being highly scalable.Â SAP released its BIA analytical engine in May after working closely with Intel Corp., IBM Corp. and Hewlett-Packard Co. The software enables users to quickly analyze and query vast amounts of business data on the fly without having to pre-aggregate and store the information in a database before querying it. SAP pre-installs BIA on blade servers from HP and IBM. Shai Agassi, president of SAP's product and technology group, described BIA as a "mini-grid and a mini-Google." SAP's main applications rival Oracle Corp. debuted aÂ stand-alone enterprise search product, Oracle Search Enterprise 10g, in March. Other applications players are also looking more seriously at the enterprise search market, including Microsoft Corp. with its Index Server software. Â