[LINK] Cisco, and the decade of the (rfid) sensor

[stephen at melbpc.org.au]

Cisco jumps into wireless sensor market:

By Ephraim Schwartz
May 21, 2007

<http://www.infoworld.com/article/07/05/21/Cisco-jumps-into-wireless-
sensor-market_1.html?source=NLC-TB&cgd=2007-05-22>

 At Interop, the high tech industry's major networking conference, a 
little-noticed partnership announcement between WhereNet, designers of 
active RFID location systems, and Cisco may be far more significant than 
anyone realizes.

The WhereNet RFID tags work in dual mode, sending either the industry 
standard ISO 24730 transmission signal which is read by WhereNet's Real-
Time Locating System (RTLS) architecture or IEEE 802.11b signal which can 
be read by Cisco Wi-Fi access points.

Active RFID chips, as opposed to passive chips, send a signal out to 
readers rather than having to be woken up by a reader, at which point the 
information is uploaded.

In essence, an upgrade to Cisco software, Release 4.1 for the Cisco 
Unified Wireless Network, available this week, gives Cisco WLANs the 
ability to format and read data generated by sensors.

The immediate benefit will be seen in that a special antenna to hear the 
signal from tag is no longer needed. 

Instead, the WhereNet tag can use the existing Wi-Fi access points that 
are already in place. 

This in turn lowers the cost of an implementation and gives users a 
broader area of location visibility, according to Dan Doles, vice 
president and general manager, WhereNet Business Unit, Zebra Technologies.

Before the integration of the two technologies, a dedicated, proprietary 
network was needed to read sensor data, said Ben Gibson, director of 
mobility solutions at Cisco. 

Now the same infrastructure, a single Wi-Fi network platform, can be used 
to host and manage sensor data.

Using an open API, Cisco can take the telemetry data and export it into a 
host of different business applications for analysis.

"Business mobility isn't just about laptops and VOIP, it is also about 
process optimization and asset tracking," said Gibson.

And this is where the long-term and far reaching benefits of the 
announcement this week comes from, according to Josh Greenbaum, principal 
at Enterprise Applications Consulting.

Sensors represent a huge, unstructured, non-relational data source 
understood in manufacturing but relatively unknown outside of it.

"Anything that is enabling the collection of sensor data is enabling the 
next revolution in information management," Greenbaum said.

However, the trick, said Greenbaum, is going to be where Cisco goes with 
this. Most sensor-based applications are vertical and industry specific.

The question is whether or not Cisco can turn this horizontal knowledge 
into specific vertical markets.

Examples include putting sensors on hospital equipment, such as a 
dialysis machine to know whether it is clean or dirty, outdoors where a 
sensor might read temperature, or on pharmaceutical products where the 
humidity and temperature may play a key role in the products viability.

Nevertheless, the agreement with WhereNet, whose active RFID-based 
solutions are focused on asset tracking and location, is only the opening 
round of what one industry expert said will become the decade of the 
sensor. 

If that is true, Cisco's relatively early entry in the sensor industry 
was a brilliant strategic move.

For its part, WhereNet is partnering with a company that can raise its 
profile with many major companies where tracking of assets and the 
deployment of RFID is quickly becoming a key component of their supply 
chain.

WhereNet tags will be priced at $55 and available in August.

Ephraim Schwartz is editor at large at InfoWorld.
--

Cheers all ..
Stephen Loosley
Victoria, Australia