iAnywhere Solutions, Inc., a subsidiary of Sybase, announced RFID Anywhere, a middleware platform that helps enterprises plan, develop, deploy and manage radio frequency identification (RFID) network solutions. With an advanced service-oriented architecture, RFID Anywhere speeds the deployment of RFID solutions through easy integration with existing applications and processes – even those that are highly distributed. In addition, the software directly manages RFID and other data collection and control devices, such as barcode readers and printers, so that developers and integrators are insulated from low-level interfaces and can focus on business logic.
Support for RFID standards and protocols, including EPC Reader Protocol 1.0, ALE 1.0, ISO-15693, ISO-18000-3, and ISO-11784, is managed through a unified interface, greatly simplifying the challenge of integrating and managing numerous devices, applications, standards and protocols. The network simulator allows the impact of data loads and content on existing networks and applications to be assessed early in the project – even before readers and other RFID-enabled hardware have been acquired.
A service-oriented architecture enables easy integration into the existing infrastructure including feeds into multiple existing applications and interfaces with system and network management software. With its support for distributed configurations and edge processing, RFID Anywhere allows multiple locations to collect RFID data whether or not the rest of the enterprise is available to receive it.
RFID Anywhere’s connectors and controllers handle the interfaces with commonly-used RFID hardware components, such as readers and printers, letting developers and integrators focus on business logic and not the code-level complexities of evolving devices and standards. As a result, companies can confidently select RFID hardware based on features, price, support, and reliability criteria without sacrificing functionality, usability or performance. Further, support can be provided for other network devices such as barcode scanners and programmable logic controllers, allowing RFID technology
Operating as a network service, RFID Anywhere provides extensibility so that the physical network of readers can be leveraged in additional, future RFID use cases allowing multiple business scenarios to be addressed with a single solution. Companies are able to adopt new uses for their original RFID network, continually improving their return on investment.
Insight: RFID is finally getting respect when big organizations like Sybase’s iAnywhere Solutions makes a market entry. This, along with start ups like Blue Vector, demonstrate that in order to solve the RFID problem correctly, the entire problem has to be addressed from the individual tag all they way through to the back end information system that defines the business process.
