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August 7, 2007

RFID subdermal employee badges

Take on an RFID chip sub-dermal just to do your job? Here we have the first Americans injected as such to do their jobs. Naturally, this raises our sensitivities about privacy and, indeed, there was protest. Will privacy be a real issue impeding RFID expansion – not only on the product side, but clearly more importantly on the human side? Those RFID executives I talk to say it’s strictly press fodder and hardly a real business consideration. The introduction of the bar code elicited similar concerns about privacy invasion. RFID is just another phase in that ongoing drama. We hardly think of bar codes as privacy invasion anymore. What people really seem to care about more is having the product they want on the shelf when they want it. Though the dots aren’t always connected with the public, RFID does certifiably support this goal.

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Posted by William McKnight at 6:59 PM | | Comments (1)

February 16, 2007

RFID chip implant company flat after IPO

Verichip, which created a system for implanting RFID chips into human arms, held its IPO last Friday. After a rough start, it’s still pretty flat. Turns out, it’s sales have not met expectations. The company statement quotes .1M in revenue, which is an interesting way of expressing $100,000. It further says “we may never achieve market acceptance or more than nominal or modest sales of this system.” What?! Did that come from the marketing department? Did it take an IPO to come to this realization?

I’m just wondering if there is a flaw in this system or if it is being marketed correctly. There are a number of human uses of RFID chips. If nightclubs in Europe can convince its VIP patrons to implant themselves, Verichip should be able to get some more arms chipped in the US.

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Posted by William McKnight at 12:37 PM | | Comments (0)

August 30, 2006

RFID Industry update

I thought I'd drop some information today on some updates in the RFID industry for the usual purpose of preparing the information management community. I have previously, either on the blog or on my podcast, referred to several facets of the industry, many of which have had some progress recently.

1. The EPC Standard - Has become the defacto RFID Spec in China
2. US Passport containing RFID chips - A reality as of August 15
3. Military tagging - Spanish military adopting RFID (for supplies)
4. Privacy concerns - Not much to say here except that Hello Kitty RFID-blocking card holders are now available. You don't mind the Hello Kitty branding for a little privacy do you?

To be sure, not all is gung-ho linear progress however. Start-ups such as Alien Technology are struggling financially.

Posted by William McKnight at 1:15 PM | | Comments (0)

March 19, 2006

A bump in the RFID road

According to several reports (link), it has been proven that viruses can be spread from tampered chips back into the database collecting the information and back out into other chips - similar to the method of viruses spreading through the internet today.

In all the excitement about RFID, I had not thought about the effect of viruses, or the method by which they would spread in this world. While this testing was done in a University setting and not meant to cause harm, obviously free market virus-making will ensue. It's much earlier in the RFID adoption than it was in the internet adoption for viruses. However, it's getting very mature in the adoption of viruses.

It will be interesting which RFID makers will present virus-protected chips first.

Posted by William McKnight at 8:25 AM | | Comments (1)

October 17, 2005

DW/BI Market and RFID progress

While most are at least tepidly pleased with the progress of business intelligence and technology initiatives in general this year, future progress is not assured according to some recent indicators. I have (and remain) bullish on our industry, but it is good to take in data points that reflect as well as oppose that position.

Such is an article I read this morning at siliconvalley.com "Confidence at 2 1/2-year low in valley" and this one from echannel on a Forrester report: "Expect a significant drop in IT spending in 2007: Forrester." It begins "According to two new reports from Forrester Research Inc., there will be a significant slowdown in U.S. IT spending growth in 2007 before rebounding to near double-digit growth by the close of the decade."

One area that IS getting a lot of attention is RFID, which is a next big horizon for business intelligence. According to this article "RFID Gaining in Popularity", "Based on a survey of 500 companies, AMR Research expects corporate RFID spending to increase 16% from 2005 to 2006, and 20% from 2006 to 2007, up from the current annual average of just above $500,000." although "RFID Implementation Challenges Persist" according to this article.

Interestingly, the advice in these articles is much the same advice that DW/BI and CRM needed in their early days - have a business case, do iterative development and don't expect generic solutions to work for you out of the box. Some things don't change.

Posted by William McKnight at 9:58 AM | | Comments (0)