By: Gerry Brown, Associate Analyst - BI and CRM, Bloor Research Posted: 25th July 2008 Copyright Bloor Research © 2008

Bloggers have ‘arrived' at the table traditionally occupied by journalists and analysts. For example, at SAP's recent annual conference for 10,000 users in Berlin, there was a special room for bloggers to touchdown, plug in portable PCs and blog away. A clear sign of the increasing importance of bloggers. Maybe journalists and analysts should team up with bloggers (as they do on www.it-analysis.com) to form the JAB acronym?

Jupiter Research reckons bloggers are more educated, more affluent, and more passionate about things than your average internet user. They are also often younger, more maverick, more outspoken, and probably have no journalistic qualifications. Anyone, from a PC in their back bedroom, can join the ‘Blogosphere'. There are virtually no barriers to entry. In June 2008 Technorati reckons there were 112.8 million blogs and 250+ million pieces of tagged social media. Wow.

Blogs are influential. Attentio says one in three car buyers use social media before buying. Three out of four IT professionals consult social media tools and user-generated content before purchasing. Four out of ten patients use online support groups to discuss medication and therapies, and the same proportion of adult leisure travelers read blogs, share photos, or take virtual tours. Big chunks of market share are being influenced by bloggers. No wonder marketers are interested.

Attentio offers a solution for B2B and B2C marketers and marketing agencies operating in Europe. Attentio offers customized Brand Dashboards, Buzz Reports, and Industry Reports on a SaaS annual subscription basis from €1,000 per desktop per month. Attentio Brand Dashboards help Brand Managers in household-name companies like Johnson & Johnson, Samsung, Toyota, Intel and Lexus to see what bloggers and forum users are saying about their products in real-time.

Daily brand reports of ‘buzz' (conversations and blog entries) are pushed to users' desktops in summary graphical form, providing brand performance comparisons and rankings versus competitive products by source, topic and country. Dashboards are fully interactive for local manipulation of data. Historical performance tables, and multi-dimensional competitive bubble charts embedded in the dashboard are due in the next release.

These reports help Brand Managers to ‘see the future first'. Marketers gain customer insights into the features customers like and dislike in products to feedback to R&D. Marketers see what people are saying immediately about their new product launch or marketing campaign. They see public opinion storm clouds brewing, so that they can prevent potential crisis situations such as mass product recalls and their associated brand equity destruction.

Attentio's products also enable marketers to identify and rank the importance of opinion leader bloggers, who are seriously listened to by consumers making purchasing decisions. These are often not the ‘usual suspects' but ‘Tier 2' bloggers who hold great sway in a specific industry or community.

The mega marketing agencies, McGraw-Hill, Nielsen, and TNS have all acquired their way into the ‘User Generated Content' (UGC) market in the US. Currently Europe is in its early stages of market development and competition is fragmented. Attentio will need to push to maintain position as a European best-of-breed champion, but the early signs are promising for both the UGC market and Attentio.

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By: Simon Holloway, Practice Leader - Process Management & RFID, Bloor Research Posted: 24th July 2008 Copyright Bloor Research © 2008

Appian announced on July 14th 2008 that it has received $10 million from Novak Biddle Venture Partners in the first round of venture funding in Appian's nine-year history. Novak Biddle co-founder and general partner Jack Biddle will join the Appian Board of Directors. Appian will use the funds to expand its leadership position in the market through further developments to its partner network, and to invest in market adoption of its Appian Anywhere software-as-a-service product, built on the Appian Enterprise BPM Suite.

Appian's BPM technology helps companies around the world easily measure, manage, and optimize their business processes to drive competitive advantage. Appian has achieved great success as a self-funded and profitable company, with more than 2.5 million seats of its software deployed across a diversified set of industries, more than $140 million of revenue. Appian Anywhere is a BPM Suite delivered as a service.

Matthew Calkins, President and CEO of Appian, said "Appian has done something very few other companies can claim: grown itself organically into a market and technology leader. We believe our partnership with Novak Biddle will make Appian an even stronger company."

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By: Simon Holloway, Practice Leader - Process Management & RFID, Bloor Research Posted: 18th July 2008 Copyright Bloor Research © 2008

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!

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By: Simon Holloway, Practice Leader - Process Management & RFID, Bloor Research Posted: 15th July 2008 Copyright Bloor Research © 2008

There is a global company which originated in Israel that, over the last 20 years, has been reinventing itself often with great success. Magic Software Enterprises is a leading provider of business integration, application development and deployment tools. Well-known names from diverse industries such as Boeing, Burger King, GE Capital, Nestle and Panasonic, are customers. In terms of partnerships, Magic Software has strategic partnerships with IBM, SAP and Salesforce.com. The company has over 500 employees worldwide. The company's headquarters and R&D facility are located in Israel. Regional offices are located in the USA, Japan, Thailand, the UK, Germany, the Netherlands, France, Hungary, India, and Israel. In June 2008, I was given a briefing by Avigdor Luttinger, Vice President of Corporate Strategy.

The story starts in the 1980's when the company began life as a spin-off from an Israeli company who distributed microcomputers. The new company moved into software development and specifically the development of an Application Generator. The first major innovation was to move from code generation to the use of an underlying meta model that allowed the company to offer application deployment for most operation systems, using a configurable engine rather than compiled or interpreted code. During the 80's the company grew based on its sales to the DOS and UNIX platforms. The GUI was all done for X-Windows.

In 1991, Magic Software became the first Israeli software company to go public on the Nasdaq. It was during this period of their life that they developed their close relationship with IBM System i (or for those of us with longer memories, AS/400!). Luttinger admitted that it was during this period that they had their first hiccup, as they focused on X-Windows and missed the Microsoft Windows adoption wave. By the time the company completely redeveloped their platform for the Windows architecture, they missed the market window ending up as a niche company offering a product where speed and portability were the key requirements. eDeveloper is a graphical, rules-based, and event-driven framework based upon:

• A pre-compiled engine suited for database business tasks
• A declarative programming methodology
• A repository of basic application modules for easy reference and re-use
• A rich complement of generic services and functions configured and invoked at run-time that reduce the time it takes to test and deploy code

What made the company a viable proposition was the large number of solutions built by ISVs (2500!) for Magic's platform. Magic Software had developed a global channel and ecosystem which today covers more than 50 countries. Luttinger told Bloor that today around 35% of their sales revenue comes from the Americas, 40% from Europe, 20% from Japan and the remainder from the rest of the World.

At the end of the 90's Magic developed a Linux version of eDeveloper. This was initially developed for a client server environment and the next twist in the story was the move to a multi-tier architecture building their own integration broker. They raised some $100 million in capital on the success they had. The company looked to use this capital investment to integrate into the application market by purchasing some of their ISV partners, but this proved not to be a good strategy. 2002 was the crunch year, Linux did not gain the expected market share and the general market contracted with the dotcom crisis. The company shrunk its workforce by more than half to 500 people. A reassessment of the company was done. This reassessment looked at how and where the company's software was being used. It was found that the product was often being used for Application Integration and was seen as having a price differential for what it offered compared to some of its main competitors.

Within 6 months, Magic Software added additional layers to eDeveloper for graphical design, process management and integrations features that came out as the first release of iBOLT in mid-2003. iBOLT simplifies the design and integration process by separating business logic from integration technology. Using wizards, drag-and-drop options, and tables, users are able to connect with enterprise applications deployed on any hardware, operating system, or database technology. iBOLT was initially targeted at the small medium enterprise market or, as Luttinger described it, for < $300k projects (which was underserved at the time). By targeting the SME market, Magic Software learnt that prospective clients really did not go for application integration off-the-shelf, what they needed were tailored versions that fitted into their vertical or with major software packages that they used.

In 2006, the company released eDeveloper V10 which was rewritten to support SOA and XML, and made available in three editions:

• eDeveloper Discovery: supports the development and deployment of basic Windows client and Web application, and distributed as shareware.
• eDeveloper Xpress: supports the development and deployment of small- to mid-scale desktop and Web applications that are based on either Pervasive or MySQL tables
• eDeveloper Enterprise: supports the development and deployment of large-scale client/server or Web applications, as well as SOA-enabled enterprise applications

So comes the penultimate twist in the Magic Software story. Having understood this, Magic developed a tailored version of iBOLT for SAP Business One. This was launched in 2005 and they now have some 300 Partners in their SAP centric ecosystem. In 2007, Magic extended the capability to cover all the other versions of SAP. Last year also saw Magic Software develop a similar programme for JD Edwards integration for AS400 customers, and this year Magic have built a similar partnership with Salesforce.com.

At the beginning of July 2008, Magic will release a brand new product, uniPaaS. uniPaaS has been built upon both eDeveloper and iBOLT. It is targeted at the delivery of rich internet applications; these are applications which have the solidness and security of desktop applications with the flexibility, agility and user experience of the web. Luttinger told me that this combination was a big technology challenge with high functionality and high user interaction, but with nothing installed on the client! Luttinger sees Magic's competition as Microsoft's Silverlight and Adobe's Flex. He sees these products as being very consumer-focused, but less productive for business applications. Magic Software focuses uniPaaS on organizations which want to take advantage of the paradigm but are more concerned with using it for business transactions. Luttinger said that for Magic Software's ISV partners solutions based on uniPaaS could be offered in a mix of on-premise and in-cloud. The key to Magic Software's upbeat views on the success of this new venture are down to the platform that they started with at the beginning of their life as their platform takes cares of the architecture, resulting in developers only having to be concerned with the business logic and user experience of the application. Luttinger explained, "Applications developed 20 years ago and deployed on a Unix and X-Windows environment, can still be easily migrated to uniPaaS and with a minimal effort deploy as Rich Internet Applications in a SaaS model." This is likely to be a big plus in Magic's favour in Bloor's opinion.

So, Magic Software have over the last 20 plus years become a flexible and agile company that has bent with the various trends in the IT marketplace but they have always stayed true to the core message that development has to be simpler and must work across a heterogeneous world in perpetual change.

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By: Simon Holloway, Practice Leader - Process Management & RFID, Bloor Research Posted: 14th July 2008 Copyright Bloor Research © 2008

On July 10th 2008, a joint press release was made by Ubisense and Alien Technology on the deployment of an RTLS and RFID solution at a leading car manufacturer. This solution has provided automatic component and vehicle identification and location.

At the test site, it is critical to register the exact part numbers of critical components (for example air bags) as they are installed in each car. To achieve this automatically while minimising human interaction and the chance of error or omission, Ubisense integrated standard Alien RFID readers into its Location Platform. This allows each assembly station to recognise the car through its industry standard VIN (Vehicle Identification Number) as it reaches the station and independently verifies which component has been added through the RFID integration. The Ubisense system automatically determines which car has entered a station, as the system is able to track and visualise each car along the assembly line to within 15cm.

Richard Green, CEO of Ubisense, said "Combining RFID technology and precision RTLS has the potential to revolutionise automotive production. Our engineers have been working with leading automotive manufacturers to develop this comprehensive solution and the feedback from our customers about the combination has been fantastic." Stephen Crocker, Director, Sales/Channel Management EMEA and India, Alien Technology Corp.said "We see many more opportunities for this combination of technologies across a variety of industries."

This shows the current trend in the RFID market which is not about the technology but about solutions to business problems in which part of the technology answer involves RFID.

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By: Gerry Brown, Associate Analyst - BI and CRM, Bloor Research Posted: 9th July 2008 Copyright Bloor Research © 2008

A McKinsey survey recently found that boards spend around 11% of their meetings talking about performance management. Performance management is a board-level strategic issue to be sure. In my view "cross-company Performance Management" (PM) is more important to business success than "cross-company BI". However, I have struggled to find empirical evidence to back up my opinion. A German company is now delivering this proof.

Gerhard Jahn is the SONAX CIO and Controller. SONAX is number one in the car care products market in Germany and ranks among the top five in Europe. It is a medium-sized company with 450 staff which has experienced double-digit growth in many areas in recent years.

SONAX believes much of its success can be attributed to a performance management strategy that is executed using IBM Cognos 8. This system is used by one out of every two administrative employees. SONAX uses the IBM Cognos 8 BI platform to monitor its financial and sales operations in 80 countries and to guide management decision-makers across the organisation. 60 new applications have been developed on the IBM Cognos 8 BI platform in just the last 12 months.

In my technical paper "Delivering Performance Management solutions", I put forward the case that performance management is not just about software, but it extends to cultural changes as well. SONAX confirms this view and is living proof. SONAX uses Cognos Metrics Studio scorecarding to transform its company strategy into concrete and measurable indicators in such areas as customer satisfaction and product complaints.

"SONAX has developed a holistic approach to performance management based on sound business principles. Our data warehouse, our ERP system and IBM Cognos 8 are helping us to achieve our objectives. IBM Cognos 8 is preparing the way for the implementation of our corporate strategy," explains Jahn.

SONAX has five key scorecards, one for each of the two parent companies, SONAX and Hoffmann MINERAL, and three for SONAX's subsidiaries. IBM Cognos 8 data is available via an internal portal. When users log in, they first see their own personal index card and the index card activity.

SONAX has more than 10 years experience with balanced scorecards and, using IBM Cognos 8, SONAX can link different scorecards and combine them in a sequence. This helps SONAX to integrate all the company's decision-making units into a complete company-wide performance management cycle.

Cross-company performance management enables faster and better management decision-making as managers gain immediate access to a ‘single data version of the truth’. Universal data availability and data accuracy gives managers the assurance and confidence to make timely and high quality decisions. IBM Cognos 8 also increases transparency for employees, allowing them to understand how and why decisions were made. This transparency has a strong positive effect on staff motivation.

SONAX has been certified for the international quality standard ISO 9000 for many years. IBM Cognos 8 is the basis for a cross-company quality management system, says Jahn. The company uses siliceous Earth, a unique mixture of quartz and kaolin as a core component in their car care products. To protect the environment and help nature return to its original state, the company is reforesting the mining areas. The performance indicators developed in IBM Cognos 8 measure the effectiveness of the reforestation after mineral mining and ensure environmentally friendly production.

Product innovation is also very important at SONAX. The Research and Development department uses performance management to derive new formulations for car care products and to test the quality and reliability of new product recipes. "SONAX has developed a project management system that takes original product ideas through to pilot production," explains Jahn. Employees are at the heart of this innovation process. IBM Cognos 8 gives employees feedback about the results of product suggestions and details development plans over the medium term.

Alongside "hard" ROI metrics, SONAX is also focusing on "soft" factors—including improving the quality of management decision-making. Decision making is based on a balanced combination of all three human aspects—head, heart and gut feeling. Most importantly, however, management decisions are now underpinned with factual foundations provided by the performance management system.

IBM Cognos 8 is converting data into decision-making knowledge for SONAX. "IBM Cognos 8 is helping SONAX to make rapid decisions and switch between strategy, planning, controlling and reporting at the touch of a button. IBM Cognos 8 is our new key to success", states Gerhard Jahn "and we're happy about that".

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By: Simon Holloway, Practice Leader - Process Management & RFID, Bloor Research Posted: 30th June 2008 Copyright Bloor Research © 2008

I have just received a press release from Checkpoint Systems and OATSystems which announced that the former had entered into "a definitive Agreement" to acquire the latter. The all cash transaction is expected to close within two weeks. Checkpoint expects the transaction to be dilutive to earnings per share through 2009 and accretive thereafter.

Checkpoint Systems are a provider of identification, tracking, security and merchandising solutions for the retail industry and its supply chain. Checkpoint has more than one million RF devices installed in stores today and has secured more than 100 billion products. OATSystems are a leader in the RFID middleware and application software arena and one of the original start-ups working on RFID middleware. Checkpoint and OATSystems offer complementary merchandise protection and inventory management applications that together strengthen their combined presence in the retail market.

Rob van der Merwe, President and Chief Executive Officer, Checkpoint Systems, Inc, said "With this acquisition, Checkpoint is once again redefining the scope of Shrink Management. The addition of OATSystems builds upon our previously announced strategy to help retailers and their suppliers migrate more easily with our Evolve Electronic Article Surveillance platform to Electronic Product Code RFID. As our industry moves to a common EPC standard, Checkpoint with the addition of OATSystems' capabilities will now be able to offer solutions that enable retailers and their supply chains to gain deeper inventory visibility—further reducing shrink and increasing bottom-line profits by enhancing on-shelf merchandise availability for consumers."

Senior management of OATSystems, including Michael George, President and Chief Executive Officer of OATSystems, will continue to operate the business as a division of Checkpoint. The Company will continue to use and develop the OATSystems brand and software platform to serve retail, consumer products and industrial customers.

So one more of the start-ups in RFID middleware has been acquired. The acquisition makes sense for both parties, who already have a number of joint customers. It will be interesting to see how the joint product set will eventually be partitioned between the OATSystems division and the main Checkpoint Systems company.

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By: Simon Holloway, Practice Leader - Process Management & RFID, Bloor Research Posted: 24th June 2008 Copyright Bloor Research © 2008

Last week saw IDS Scheer make 4 announcements at ARIS ProcessWorld 2008 in Berlin.

New Features

In the first announcement IDS Scheer, is adding new products and functions to ARIS Platform. The stated aim is that these new features should increase the operational deployment of ARIS products. The new features strengthen the operational phase and the process management process for ARIS. The focus is shifting from the design phase of IT and business processes to everyday work within processes and process monitoring, which fits with the current trends in the BPMS world. The specific additions to the ARIS product family are ARIS Governance Engine, ARIS Performance Dashboard, and an enhanced version of ARIS Business Publisher.

Key to this more widespread operational use is ARIS Governance Engine, which regulates and automates the process of process management. This tool and process environment, scheduled for release in Q1 2009, will cover a wide range of scenarios. Because it can be used to control and monitor high-level process rules, it supports efficient implementation of every type of governance process.

In addition, ARIS Performance Dashboard enables business users to leverage process-oriented business intelligence technology for their day-to-day activities at the strategic, tactical, and operational level.

Finally, the enhanced version of ARIS Business Publisher offers improved options for internal and external communication, publishing, and process management that benefit expert and non-expert ARIS users alike. The development brief includes integration of Web 2.0 technologies.

Partnership 1 - BMC Software

By linking Business Process Management from ARIS with IT Service Management from BMC Software, the aim is to provide customers with the ability to document cause-and-effect relationships between the business process and IT components and thus provide the business with valuable knowledge on the impact to a business process based on changes or events occurring to the underlying IT infrastructure.

The BMC Discovery for Business Processes product, developed by BMC in partnership with IDS Scheer, enables IT departments to automatically discover business process models from ARIS Business Architect and dynamically map them with information on IT services and infrastructure stored in the BMC Atrium CMDB solution. By this IT departments can determine which business process is affected when IT events occur and then prioritize events according to their impact on the business. This not only improves business efficiency by aligning business and IT processes, but also the communication of change requests and the compliance with regulatory standards in IT Service Management.
The new IDS Scheer product ARIS Interface for BMC Atrium CMDB closes the loop by extracting data about deployed applications and technology from the CMDB and importing into the ARIS Repository. Here it is linked to the application architecture, landscape planning information and the business processes. Enterprise architects can use this information in ARIS IT Architect to analyse the impact of IT projects to the existing landscape and evaluate the degree of standardization across software, hardware. Two users, TeamBank and TietoEnator, gave their view on the results of this partnership in terms of the effect on them.

Partnership 2 - Microsoft

IDS Scheer announced the availability of its integration of the ARIS Platform with Microsoft BizTalk Server 2006 R2. IDS Scheer is part of Microsoft Business Process Alliance. Allen Johnson, Director Partner/ Alliances at IDS Scheer said, "With this integration, companies can accelerate their return on business process management improving their business performance. They are able to seamlessly model and design business processes using ARIS, and then execute them through Microsoft BizTalk Server and respective web services."

The integrated offering allows organisations to design, simulate and execute business process dynamically through BizTalk Server 2006 R2 and also enables Process Analytics and Intelligence to be built into the business process which in turn enables a continuous improvement capability with a dashboard for process based decision making for the business.

Partnership 3 - SAP

IDS Scheer has for a long time had a very close relationship with SAP. The announcement concerns a process-oriented consulting approach for organisation that is planning to introduce or upgrade SAP. "Process-Driven SAP" comprises a set of methods, BPM tools, and work templates that provide support from the strategy phase through process design and organizational design to implementation of the required SAP modules. According to IDS Scheer it enables SAP software to be rolled out up to 30 percent faster and 15 percent cheaper. The special focus is on aligning the ERP modules with the requirements of internal and inter-company process structures.

Summary

IDS Scheer like many BPMS vendors is looking at ways to differentiate its product set from its competition. The BPMS market is currently going though a series of announcements in which vendors are adding to their partnership approaches, particularly with Microsoft. IDS Scheer' Microsoft announcement is slightly different as most of the other are around collaboration with the MOSS environment; here we have got a more seamless join between BizTalk and ARIS. I am particularly interested in the BMC Software announcement which is something at the moment that no one else is offering.

Governance is an important issue for many organisations and IDS Scheer's announcement of a Governance Engine is a big help for many organisations, particularly for those with SAP, who can additionally benefit from the close relationship between the two parties.

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By: Simon Holloway, Practice Leader - Process Management & RFID, Bloor Research Posted: 23rd June 2008 Copyright Bloor Research © 2008

In my research on the RFID Middleware market, I came across a number of vendors that were new to me. In a series of articles, I will provide a short overview of these products. The sixth of these is SkandSoft Technologies.

I was not able to find from any source when SkandSoft Technologies were founded. Their headquarters is in Mumbai, India. They have no other offices in the world. SkandSoft Technologies are a subsidiary of SPANCO Telesystems and Solutions Ltd. Currently they have partnership with a small number of hardware vendors that include: Alien, Checkpoint, FEIG, Intermec, Motorola, Traze and Wavetrend. They also have technical partnerships with both SAP and Sun Microsystems.

SETU (SkandSoft Enterprise Trans-management Unit), which means "bridge" in the Sanskrit language, is an interesting mix of RFID middleware and EAI software. It has been built in such a way that it requires very little coding as much is already configured in the product.

SETU comprises of the SETU Server and Client. The Server is responsible for managing SETU Clients installed in an environment. The Client is responsible for interaction with RFID hardware. The Server can connect to as many as 20 Clients. SETU^TM comprises of the following modules:

• Manage RFID Grid
• Manage Environment
• Wal-Mart module
• DOD module
• Manage Business Process
• Associate after writing and
• Reports

SkandSoft have developed a series vertical solutions based on SETU for the following:

• Retail Management
• Heathcare Solutions
• Airport Management
• Pharmaceutical
• Manufacturing

Key findings

In the opinion of Bloor Research the following represent the key facts of which prospective users should be aware:

• SETU supports EPC RP1.1 with both RP and non-RP readers (ISO and EPC Gen1, Gen2). This unique feature is achieved by converting the conventional reader command sets responses to RP compliant responses.
• SETU supports all 21 Van der Aalst patterns. This allows users to create and deploy any business process through zero-code configuration screens. By hard coding 60% of all the common functionality of RFID solution directly onto SETU, the balance 20% is for industry specific customization & 20% for Client specific customization.
• SETU provides a health management module for control of RFID hardware devices. The module is independent of hardware parameters - vendor, frequency, protocol, etc. It also supports SNMP and non-SNMP devices.
• SkandSoft have Global/ US patent pending on technology that parses data in a common format for a process of multilevel filtering, corroboration and analysis, resulting in the delivering 1% of information to the user.
• SETU provides integration with Industrial Control and Automation Systems - PLCs, Micro Controllers, and SCADA.

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By: Simon Holloway, Practice Leader - Process Management & RFID, Bloor Research Posted: 9th June 2008 Copyright Bloor Research © 2008

Appian announced on June 2nd 2008 the availability of Appian for SharePoint. Thus Appian become another independent BPMS vendor that has decided to provide tighter integration to Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 (MOSS).

So what do you get from Appian? Well Appian say that it will enable users of the MOSS platform to take advantage of the process orchestration, task handling, and process reporting capabilities of the Appian platform. The Appian SharePoint WebPart interfaces can be used to handle tasks and display any process performance reports in a native SharePoint dashboard. Appian for SharePoint also gives process designers greater control over workflow and processes in the SharePoint environment. It also provides services interfaces for controlling SharePoint Sites, documents, folders, and permissions through Appian processes and rules.

Matthew Calkins, President and CEO of Appian, said, "Business process management and workflow are crucial areas where SharePoint's basic capabilities need to be supplemented to realize maximum value. Many of our customers plan to use Appian for SharePoint as a powerful yet simple mechanism for bringing the power of process innovation into the hands of SharePoint users."

Who gains? Well Appian gain by exploiting the connection to Microsoft Office. Microsoft gain by having another BPMS vendor link to their Office 2007 platform. This should help them convince more organisations to upgrade to 2007. Lastly, users of the Office 2007 gain by having more choice of BPMS products that will work tightly with their chosen office platform.

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By: Simon Holloway, Practice Leader - Process Management & RFID, Bloor Research Posted: 6th June 2008 Copyright Bloor Research © 2008

Those of you who have been involved in initial pilots and multi-site deployments involving fairly standard and unvarying workflows know that that some of today's RFID Middleware is like a sledgehammer to crack a nut! I was therefore pleasantly surprised to hear from Michael Becker, Director of Marketing at GlobeRanger Inc, that they have released a solution to this problem with the introduction of SNAP (Smart Network Appliance Product).

So what is SNAP? SNAP is built on the GlobeRanger proven iMotion platform. It provides comprehensive workflow and process management support at the edge of enterprise so that there is no need to route data back to back-end applications. SNAP also allows installations to be managed remotely, which means that companies can configure and update applications instantly across their networks. The product does provide what GlobeRanger describes as easy connection to back-end systems. There was not enough details for me to confirm just what "easy" means—so watch this space for a more detailed review of SNAP.

Becker said "SNAP is suited for rapid deployments at small, remote and multi-site deployments with limited IT support and tight budgets. It is ideally suited for the following environments: Retail Outlets; Pharmacy Chains; Branch Office Locations; and Small Satellite Warehouses."

I will admit that I am a fan of GlobeRanger and their iMotion product, and this seems to be a clever add-on to this platform to support rapid deployment. More details to follow once I get them.

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By: Simon Holloway, Practice Leader - Process Management & RFID, Bloor Research Posted: 6th June 2008 Copyright Bloor Research © 2008

On May 28th 2008, Metastorm announced the release of version 7.6 of their BPM Suite. This follows a trend in the BPMS market of major independent vendors providing extended support for Microsoft Office Suite 2007 and particularly SharePoint Server 2007.

Greg Carter, vice president of development and CTO of Metastorm, stated "This latest release of Metastorm BPM further strengthens our use of Microsoft desktop technologies to deliver greater ease-of-use to process participants and to support faster deployment and user acceptance of BPM within organizations that standardize on Microsoft productivity applications such as Office SharePoint Server 2007 and Office 2007".

The latest features in Metastorm BPM allow organisations to incorporate process participation, content collaboration, process monitoring, and process reporting and analysis directly into the desktop and web interfaces already in use by knowledge workers based on Microsoft Office Word, Excel, and PowerPoint as well as Office SharePoint Server 2007 portal interfaces. Innovation in Metastorm BPM 7.6 includes process binding from Metastorm BPM into Office 2007 which allows for greater collaboration among process participants and business user control over Metastorm process reporting through Excel 2007.

So what are the other additional features? Firstly, there is a new "Notify" gadget for users of Windows Vista that will alert users when new items require their attention in Metastorm BPM. This new feature adds to Metastorm's existing BAM capabilities.

Secondly, Metastorm has enhanced its software to support document clip fields that allow users to link and track content directly within a process while at the same time storing and maintaining the integrity and latest version of the document in the source content management system. Leveraging this new capability, Metastorm has enhanced its integration with Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 to include support for its document libraries and provided a packaged framework that allows customers to use this capability with any ECM or DMS.

Metastorm, after its purchases of ProVision, announced a move to provide a common platform for all its products, called Metastorm Enterprise. This common platform includes shared services and a common meta-model for enhanced visibility and better understanding of the impact of decisions at all levels. As part of the Metastorm Enterprise platform development, Metastorm BPM Version 7.6 makes use of the simulation engine of Metastorm ProVision as the simulation module of the Metastorm BPM suite.

So what does this announcement mean? Well, firstly it shows that the market requires BPMS products to provide close support of the Microsoft Office Suite 2007 capabilities. Secondly, for Metastorm, they have filled the gap in their product offerings with the support of simulation, and they have done this by integrating the BPM suite with their ProVision purchase and thus showing the first integration deliverable of their Enterprise announcements.

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By: Simon Holloway, Practice Leader - Process Management & RFID, Bloor Research Posted: 30th May 2008 Copyright Bloor Research © 2008

At the beginning of April I met with the senior management team from Innovision Research & Technology at the Royal Society for the Arts in London. David Wollen, the CEO, and Marc Borrett, Business Development Director gave the briefing.

So, who is Innovision Research & Technology? Well, they are a leading fabless[1] custom RF IC design and systems provider, offering a complete engineering capability to their clients, including research engineering, custom IC design and production, and system design engineering. The company's primary focus is short-range data communication from one device to another, passive and/or active, with a special emphasis on Near Field Communication (NFC) and RFID solutions. They have their headquarters in Cirencester, Gloucestershire, UK. Innovision R&T was listed in 2001 on the Alternative Investment Market (AIM) of the London Stock Exchange (ticker symbol: INN).

Do you understand what NFC is? Well for those not familiar with this TLA, here is a brief explanation. Wikipedia defines Near Field Communication (NFC), as a short-range high-frequency wireless communication technology, which enables the exchange of data between devices over about a 10 centimetre (~4 inches) distance.

NFC is based on RFID. The technology is an extension of the ISO 14443 proximity-card standard (contactless card, RFID) that combines the interface of a smartcard and a reader into a single device. NFC communicates via magnetic field induction, where two loop antennas are located within each other's near field, effectively forming an air-core transformer. It operates within the globally available and unlicensed radio frequency ISM band of 13.56 MHz, with a bandwidth of almost 2 MHz. An NFC device can communicate with both existing ISO 14443 smartcards and readers, as well as with other NFC devices, and is thereby compatible with existing contactless infrastructure already in use for public transportation and payment. NFC is primarily aimed at usage in mobile phones. Industry analysts have predicted that by 2011, 30 per cent of all mobile phones that ship will be NFC-enabled. Plenty of applications are possible, such as:

• Mobile ticketing in public transport—an extension of the existing contactless infrastructure.
• Mobile Payment—the device acts as a debit/credit payment card.
• Smart poster—the mobile phone is used to read RFID tags on outdoor billboards in order to get info on the move.
• Bluetooth pairing—in the future, pairing of Bluetooth 2.1 devices with NFC support will be as easy as bringing them close together and accepting the pairing. The process of activating Bluetooth on both sides, searching, waiting, pairing and authorisation will be replaced by a simple "touch" of the mobile phones.

Innovision has been involved in NFC from the start. They have partnered with a major global handset manufacturer to develop "best in class" NFC architectures, designs and silicon implementations to ensure NFC chipsets can achieve not only the technical performance but also the commercial imperatives of cost and physical size. They have developed a range of coreware IP that has been optimised for low power implementations and is therefore highly efficient. Innovision's NFC offerings:

• Custom NFC IP and IC design solutions for integrated System on Chip (SoC) solutions for a range of IC platforms such as Bluetooth, WiFi, UWB and WiMax.
• Topaz—mandated by NFC Forum as the Type 1 NFC Forum Tag Format.

Innovision is a member of the NFC Forum and currently chairs the Tags and Formats task force working group, helping to develop the future NFC standards for payments, ticketing, peer-to-peer connectivity and service initiation implementations.

So, here we have a groundbreaking technology and a British company at the forefront and yet how well known is this fact?

[1]
Definition: (FABricationLESS) A semiconductor vendor that does not have inhouse manufacturing facilities. Although it designs and tests the chips, it relies on external foundries (fabs) for their actual fabrication. (PC Magazine)

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By: Simon Holloway, Practice Leader - Process Management & RFID, Bloor Research Posted: 9th May 2008 Copyright Bloor Research © 2008

Warehouse management is viewed by all involved in Logistics as a key to being successful in this fast moving industry. But the price of IT systems with the right mix of functionality for the SME market has been a major issue in the reticence of these organisations moving away from the use of Excel spreadsheets. 3M Supply Chain Solutions has been a major player in the warehouse management system (WMS) market with its HighJump product since their foundation in April 1983. They have over 1,300 customers worldwide; these include such well-known names as Duracell, Sony, Yamaha, Pepsi, Toyota, Bridgestone and of course parent company 3M. At the end of 2007, 3M Supply Chain Solutions released a version of their WMS—HighJumpWarehouse Advantage-45—specifically for the SME market. Bloor was given a briefing on the capabilities of this new venture by Chris Goldsmith (Director, Product Strategy), Hugh Murphy (EMEA Marketing Manager) and Chad Eckes (Director, Product Strategy).

Goldsmith stated that "Globalisation continues to increase competitive pressure even for smaller companies, which result in several challenges for these companies. They are being forced to innovate while, at the same time, they need to cut costs to remain viable. SMEs have fewer resources but must interact with larger, more advanced companies in the global supply chain. On top of this, goods movement and logistics are riddled with inefficiencies due to lack of investment in technology." In the past SMEs may have needed new systems, but were unable to afford a long and expensive implementation cycle. Additionally, they have wanted a simple system without the full complex support for warehouse management, but this system has to be able to grow with them. Because of their size, SMEs also need a system with fast employee adoption. What an SME would really like is a WMS vendor who will provide them with best of breed functionality and architecture without best of breed pricing and, most importantly, who will be there in the future.

Eckes explained further: "3M Supply Chain Solutions has built HighJump Warehouse Advantage-45 to address the pains of SMEs. It is a rapidly configured WMS that is designed to be fully implemented within 45 business days. The solution contains all the key warehouse management features an SME needs, and is built upon the same technology as our enterprise-class WMS—HighJump Warehouse Advantage." WA-45 provides the following WMS features:

• Tracking and visibility of inbound orders
• Receiving: automatically validates receipts against orders
• Directed put-away: ensuring the right materials are put away in the right location. Materials can be put away using a variety of algorithm choices, including FIFO and LIFO.
• Picking: support for by order, batch or label.
• Coordinate packing and shipping processes to increase fill rates and cut preparation time for shipping documents and ship confirmations.
• Replenish materials automatically so associates have sufficient inventory to fill orders, and short-shipped orders are minimised.
• Inventory control: 3M Supply Chain Solutions claims that the solution can achieve up to 99+ percent inventory accuracy, visibility and traceability.
• The system captures every transaction in the warehouse and presents operational information through a web interface.
• A web page development tool, WebWise, that allows the user to edit and create pages, so users see information in the terminology and format to which they are accustomed.

To achieve the 45 day implementation, 3M Supply Chain Solutions has provided a number of aids to make implementation easier and faster. These include:

• Playbook: the analogy Goldsmith and Eckes gave Bloor that it was like a sports playbook
• User guide: this provides specific direction by Job Category; namely the warehouse leader and the system administrator
• HighJump University: this is a set of online courses, involving about 30 hours of class time. The courses are aimed at the SMEs' key users with the goal of making them productive from day one
• Warehouse Wizard: this wizard provides an easy to use means of converting the Logical Warehouse definitions to the actual Physical Warehouse environment.

Murphy described the flexible pricing of WA-45, "For some users, we realise that they want to make an outright purchase so WA-45 is available on license covering a maximum of 20 concurrent users. Other users prefer a subscription-based manner. So WA-45 is also available in this way. The conditions are the same as for the perpetual license, and clients sign for at least a one-year license, which is renewable annually. WA-45 also has an la carte functionality, allowing a user to only buy the functionality they need."

With the current pressure of SME logistics companies, WA-45 is a welcome addition to the software available to run effective warehouse operations. Bloor are particular impressed with the way 3M Supply Chain Solutions has gone about the engineering of a version of their Tier 1 product to meet the needs of SMEs, but at the same allowing them to grow into the larger system. The portfolio of tools to support the quick implementation is very impressive. 3M Supply Chain Solutions is consolidating their position as a serious player in the WMS market.

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By: Simon Holloway, Practice Leader - Process Management & RFID, Bloor Research Posted: 7th May 2008 Copyright Bloor Research © 2008

Last month, I had the pleasure of having a briefing from Martijn Iseger, Product Marketing Manager of QPR Software Plc, on their QPR Business Process Management Suite. QPR Software has a different approach to providing BPMS solutions, which allows a phased approach for BPM adoption. The major benefit of this approach is that the customer does not have to commit a large amount of resources to a "make or break" BPM project. Instead, this flexible BPM adoption approach allows customers to bring BPM in-house at a pace that suits them best.

Have you heard of QPR Software before? They were founded in 1991 and their headquarters are in Helsinki, Finland. They went public in 2002 and are quoted on the Helsinki Stock Exchange. They have 60 employees with a subsidiary in South Africa. Their go-to-market strategy is based on a large partner network with 72 VARs in 58 countries, and 184 partners in total. This extensive partner network has resulted in QPR Software having an impressive worldwide penetration for a company of their size. The key markets for QPR Software are Nordic, UK, USA, South Africa, and Japan. They target organisations in the process of transition and who, from a technology viewpoint, are Microsoft .NET Platform based. This sales and go-to-market strategy has been very successful as they have over 1,500 customers, which include Bosch/Siemens Domestic Appliances, TTSL/Tata Indicom, Canon, Emirates Identity Agency, Petrobras, Copel, City of Oulu and Swiss Post.

With 75 % of the Swiss market share, PostParcels, the parcel division of Swiss Post, is the leader in parcel distribution. About 4,000 employees are responsible for transporting around 105 million parcels a year and an average of about 500,000 per day. Krystian Lasek, Head of Strategy at PostParcels stated that the QPR BPM solution significantly improved the quality of their services to customers, something their customer surveys clearly identified.

So what is different about QPR Software's approach to BPMs? QPR Software has put together a well integrated suite of best of breed products to provide support for organisations implementing Business Process Management from strategy formulation, process design to live running with Performance Management, an important driver for continuous process improvement. Some of these products are engineered by themselves, whilst others are OEM'd from organisations QPR consider to be the pick of vendors in these niches. The QPR BPM Suite consists of the following products, all of which are based on the Microsoft platform:

• QPR ScoreCard - is a Performance Management tool. It provides both support during the formulation of business strategies for the capture of objectives and measures, as well as the automatic collection and consolidation of data from business processes. The information is provided in the form of scorecards, digital dashboards and strategy maps.
• QPR ProcessGuide - provides support for analysis and design of business processes for business users. It provides support for BPMN, with the ability to convert the BPMN models into BPEL specifications for making process designs executable with workflow execution engines.
• QPR FactView - is a Business Analysis add-on to QPR ScoreCard. It provides support for dashboards and alerts, multi-dimensional analyses, slice and dice of data. QPR FactView is a tailored version of QlickView from QlikTech. This technology provides in-memory analysis and data association so that data is loaded, prepared and presented on the fly.
• QPR Workflow - is the Business Process Automation add-on to QPR ProcessGuide. It is an OEM version of PNMsoft Sequence. It works in Microsoft Internet Explorer environment to provide automation of human-centric business processes.
• QPR Portal - provides the portal glue both at runtime and during development for pulling together the product suite through a single user interface.

QPR have put together an impressive set of products to provide an environment for the development and management of business processes. By using standards for their interfaces they have also allowed their potential customers to purchase only those pieces of the suite that they require. This provides greater flexibility as well as the ability to start small and expand to the full capabilities as required. All the products work on a client server approach.

QPR Software has cleverly chosen the portal medium, in the form of QPR Portal, to pull the different products together into a single suite, which is able to be customised to include other products depending on clients needs. There is a key business user focus to the whole suite with all the tools being easy to use. The BAM environment provided by QPR ScoreCard and QPR FactView is very powerful being based on tools originally developed for Business Analysis and Performance Management

The QPR BPMS Suite provides an impressive portfolio with an innovative approach based around flexibility, whilst at the same time providing the necessary IT controls and business user ease of use requirements that are needed. Bloor would recommend that potential BPMS users take a closer look at this flexible solution.

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By: Simon Holloway, Practice Leader - Process Management & RFID, Bloor Research Posted: 2nd May 2008 Copyright Bloor Research © 2008

Business Community Management (BCM)—there's a new name for you. It certainly was to me when I met the EMEA management team of Inovis, John Redfern - MD, Paul Tatam - Sales & Marketing Director and Stephen Jefferies - Director of Retail. Redfern described BCM as "BCM creates a comprehensive view of an organisation's supply chain by integrating the technology, business processes and communication of the entire business community. By unifying the technology and business community communication, a company can optimise its supply chain and create sustainable value through three key avenues: increasing end-to-end visibility, reducing B2B complexity and automating the entire trading community." Now that seems to be quite a mouthful and you may still not quite get what is involved.

Let's go back to look at a typical supply chain. There you are, a manufacturer of widgets—of course, the best in the market. You have a number of partners who provide services and component parts that help you make your widgets. The first requirement to operate in today's fast changing world is that you have all the necessary systems that allow you to manage your own operations. This is normally provided by an Enterprise Resource Planning package. This helps you manage your sales and purchase orders and their links into your production orders and, importantly, your finance systems. You can manage your own inventory in your own warehouses and WIP on the shop floor. Now all manufacturers have heard of Lean Manufacturing or one of its many derivatives such as TQM, Six Sigma and so on. All these are ways to help the manufacturer reduce their costs through managing their inventory through a just-in-time principal. There is a fundamental key to this—you have to collaborate with your partners. This means you need to share information, make compromises and work for the benefit of all concerned—that, of course, includes the customer. Now come the problems:

• They don't have the same meaning for the data terms that you use
• They don't use the same ERP system as you do
• They have other customers who are your rivals so there is a need to secure sensitive information on both sides
• In a number of scenarios, it is not just 2 companies involved but a plethora—for instance component manufacturer, logistics company and you
• All your current ERPs are not very flexible and business users have developed lots of Microsoft Office based application front-ends
• A high proportion of your orders are in error with a large number resulting in deductions and overpayments
• You have a high number of stock-out situations occurring
• It is costing you between £20–40 a time to resolve data and invoice errors.

So what you need to be able to work this complex environment is something that simplifies it all by taking the complexity away, improving the visibility across the whole supply chain with better security and that provides agile integration between all partners. So what services do you need in place to achieve this?

The first piece is a communications layer that allows all members of the supply chain to exchange content with a gateway/portal that controls the access to the content dependent on role. The content exchanged needs to be both validated as well as synchronised. As content is added there is a need for an event driven process to be triggered. This will need to integrate with a number of transactions and processes in different organisations to support the business process. Therefore there is a need for transaction and services management as well as facilities to make interoperability between the diverse systems easier. To overcome disparities in data meaning, there is a need for a Master Data Management solution for the community and data that is shared between business partners. In order to manage the environment, provide business intelligence and support alerts around governance and compliance issues, the solution has to have a layer for management and reporting. This is what Business Community Management is all about. Does this sound too good to be true?

So how do Inovis tackle this? Inovis provide a suite of modular applications, all of which are built upon their Multienteprise Expert Services Hub (MESH) platform—this is designed on a distributed architecture around a J2EE clustered environment. The BCM suite comprises five key modules that support the BCM model I have described. Jefferies said, "The modular nature of BCM applications enable companies to add value incrementally, allowing quick adoption as business needs require and the ability to scale for future growth".

The Visibility module provides a "single pane of glass" view presented on a dashboard that enables the community to track and act upon the business intelligence in real time. The Transact module translates data from an array of protocols, standards and applications. The translation applications support VAN, Direct Connect, ebXML, Web Services, AS/1 (SMTP), AS/2 (HTTP/s) and AS/3 (FTP) and other network-based protocols and formats including EDI, EDI-INT, RosettaNet, and has specific adapters and support for enterprise integration to systems such as Oracle and SAP. The Collaboration module features out-of-the-box notification, events and alert capabilities. It allows the user to define the performance parameters and responses to meet specific community needs. The Communication module supports over 47 protocols and standards, including direct connect, AS1, AS2, AS3 and Value-Added Networks (VANs). The Optimize module is built around a centralised master data repository that standardises B2B documents, supply chain documents and catalogue items from the community. It features a tracking portal that provides visibility into every transaction in addition to tracking of data against pre-defined business rules. When errors are identified, transactions are quarantined and resolved before they can create downstream problems in the supply chain or other business process. These applications are provided as services run on the Inovisworks™ Value-Added Network hosted at Inovis's Tier Four Data Centre, which Inovis claim has 99.995% availability with automated failover. The service is supported by professional and educational services to enable the customer to make the most of the solutions provided.

So we have a new acronym—BCM—and a new outsource service from a well-known experienced provider of outsourced services. If you want to improve your supply chain and you have been nodding your head as I have described the scenario, you should certainly look seriously at Inovis's BCM solution.

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By: Simon Holloway, Practice Leader - Process Management & RFID, Bloor Research Posted: 28th April 2008 Copyright Bloor Research © 2008

April 10th saw the GS1 UK annual conference, the second hosted at Leicester City Football Club. Malcolm Bowden, GS1 UK's Business Development Director, in his letter of welcome, said, "This annual event aims to show you (our members) how GS1 UK and the GS1 System of standards can improve the effectiveness and efficiency of your supply chain". In a series of three articles, I will share my understanding of what the speakers at the conference presented. In this, the third and final article, I will look at three speakers who talked about RFID matters.

The first speaker up was David Lyons, EPCglobal Business Manager of GS1 UK, who talked about EPCglobal and RFID industry developments. Lyon's key message to the audience was "It's all about the process now. RFID technology is proven and the standards required are in place. Regulations are now friendly. This situation has resulted in GS1 UK's main goal being to support UK RFID pilots". Lyons went to explain what UK industry was asking GS1 UK to concentrate its efforts on, these included:

• Full product lifecycle management
• Reusable tags
• Anti-counterfeiting solutions
• Asset tracking applications
• Anti-theft, border security
• Consumer focus
• Authentication
• Enhanced Tag security and privacy

GS1 UK has currently, in its pipeline of deliverables, ratification this quarter of 2008 of the High Frequency Generation 2 standard. In the slightly longer term it has been working on standards for active and semi-active tags, for temperature, shock and humidity information on sensors and for additional data on tags. All these are very necessary to keep the momentum of adoption of RFID still going.

Lyons then gave a brief overview of the EPCIS standard ratified a year ago (for more information see new Technical Report on RFID Middleware that I have just written). His next topic was to discuss the new RFID Centre that GS1 have set up. When this was first announced, I wrote a rather disparaging article. However, I have changed my mind; this centre is different to others that I talked about in the article. It is there to help users with proof-of-concepts and, for that, I commend the work done by GS1. Lyons concluded his talk by talking about the Metro project which is based completely on EPCglobal standards.

The second talk was from Andy Chadbourne, Marketing Manager of Intellident, on Practical return on investment from RFID. At the end of 2007, Intellident reached a major milestone with their 600 RFID project, and Chadbourne's talk was based on this level of experience. Chadbourne stated, "In our experience RFID projects fail for several reasons. Firstly it is just about replacing a barcode system; this involves simply swapped-out for RFID and not adding additional benefits. The second reason is when someone is trying to find a ‘home' for RFID; this is all about the business wanting RFID rather than needing it. The third (my comment - the worst) is where there is no business case and therefore it's a ‘toy' project or contains the previous points". In my view this 'no business case' scenario is the worst possible one to be met with. The final case Chadbourne put forward was when it is an internal implementation, when this sort of project is not core to the business skills.

The last point raised a few eyebrows in the audience but Chadbourne went on to explain that internal implementations fail because every company has its own specialities and in today's business many operations that are not core to the business are outsourced, such as security and courier services. RFID is not any different, but it is perceived as being so.

Chadbourne went on to describe Intellident's process for guaranteed ROI at the pilot stage. It starts with challenging why you are thinking of doing the project. This gets at the business issues that need to be tackled. The next step is to analyse if RFID is the correct solution. Chadbourne stressed that it was important at this stage to set defined metrics for later review. Then the project moves to the implementation stage. It is important to make sure that it's done well. The final stage is a review. Here one checks whether the project meet it's objectives that were set in the second stage. Chadbourne stated that if the review doesn't pass the pre-defined metrics then don't continue. The rest of the presentation looked at 2 of the projects Intellident had been involved to show how this ROI approach had been used.

The final talk was from Antony Allen of MSP on RFID alchemy—turning RFID data into gold. This was one of the cleverest and wittiest presentations I have seen for some time. Allen used the format of "Who wants to be a Millionaire?" to talk about who wants to save a million? Using the Millionaire question format, a ‘customer' was put through a series of questions that are faced in today's business world. These included:

• You need to reduce the number of short shipments to your customers
• What is the biggest cause of customer attrition
• What single factor contributes most to losing a bag (how apt after the debacle at terminal 5!!)

After each question, MSP explained how to find the answer to the question using BI data collected form RFID data and other business sources.

If we accept GS1 UK's premise that the technology is proven then the presentations from Intellident and MSP showed would-be users of RFID solutions how to go about the process and what could be achieved. My personal view is that GS1 are right, we have the technology; it is proven and the standards are in place. What the UK seems to be missing is the will to exploit it and this is made worse by the current financial crisis. However there is an old adage—you have to invest to accumulate. So, UK—the challenge is there. If we are to avoid debacles like Terminal 5, then we need to look at using proven technology with the right standards and ensure that all involved collaborate.

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By: Simon Holloway, Practice Leader - Process Management & RFID, Bloor Research Posted: 23rd April 2008 Copyright Bloor Research © 2008

Sirit and Reva Systems announced at the beginning of last week that METRO Group is deploying Sirit's INfinity 510 UHF RFID reader and Reva's TAP 331 appliance as part of the recently announced expanded rollout at METRO Group's Real brand hypermarket stores. The 200 Real locations will be equipped with Checkpoint portals powered by Sirit readers at the loading doors to track incoming goods. Reva's RFID network infrastructure will be installed at each location to provide device management and data processing.

The Sirit readers will be used to track pallets and cases as they arrive at the stores to improve supply chain efficiency. Reva's appliances will be used to manage the distributed network of RFID installations, to produce accurate data from each site, and to provide rapid operator feedback during logistics operations. This 200-location rollout builds on last October's successful implementation.

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By: Simon Holloway, Practice Leader - Process Management & RFID, Bloor Research Posted: 21st April 2008 Copyright Bloor Research © 2008

I have just picked up the news that Microsoft has unveiled its BizTalk RFID Mobile platform. A previously private beta version of the software was made available on April 18th 2008, and general availability is promised for later in 2008.

Since leaving Microsoft in 2006, I have known that this was on the cards. BizTalk RFID Mobile, when used with BizTalk Server 2006 R2, extends RFID support for business process to Windows CE and Windows Mobile 5.0 applications.

"Customers have asked for business process technologies that enable real-time decision-making to help drive measurable business results," said Burley Kawasaki, director of product management in the Connected Systems Division at Microsoft.

Microsoft also announced the BizTalk RFID Standards Pack for customers to integrate RFID technologies with Electronic Product Code standards, including Tag Data Translator and Low Level Reader Protocol.

Watch IT-analysis for further information.

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