On July 15th 2008, Reva announced the general availability of its new Tag Acquisition Processor (TAP) appliance, the TAP 721, and at the same time announced the release of version 2.3 of the TAP software for all models.

The Reva TAP 721 is targeted to support large, dynamic sites. The per unit/per site reader capacity allows for any combination of fixed multi-antenna, fixed single antenna, or mobile and handheld readers that, when aggregated, add up to 1,024 read-points. Reva already have installed the product at several customer sites, and they reported that there was growing interest within the aerospace manufacturing, automotive manufacturing, postal services and airport operations sectors. Pricing for the Reva TAP is based on the reader processing requirements for each appliance.

The new software release (2.3) contains customer-driven enhancements that include:

• "Advanced" modelling of antenna coverage zones
• configuration of transition portals using standard readers
• Automatic detection of tag direction through transitions for populations of simultaneously moving tagged objects
• A pre-packaged client for configuring EPCglobal ALE compliant reports
• Improved web-based analysis tools
• An enhanced workflow developer's kit

Ashley Stephenson, chairman of Reva Systems said, "The TAP 721 extends the benefits of RFID network infrastructure to breakthrough price/performance levels. Now TAP appliances can cover sites with reader requirements from 1 to more than a 1000. The 721 is ideal for large sites encompassing many processes and physical devices."

Reva are an interesting company, being one of the pioneers in providing RFID middleware inside a hardware device. This announcement shows how RFID technology is progressing to be better able to handle large throughputs of reads. It will be interesting to see if Reva's statement about interest from different sectors turns into hard sales. My thought is that Reva are ideally placed to take a good slice of the market if customers see the benefits in terms of deliverables in this time of recession—that means reductions in cost and big time too!