Sep 27, 2013One year after completing an initial installation of passive ultrahigh-frequency (UHF) RFID technology to track IT assets at its data center in Woodlawn, Md., the Social Security Administration (SSA) has signed a $3.3 million contract to supply RFID tags and readers to all three of its national data centers, as well as to 1,500 field offices across the United States. The technology will track the locations of data-center assets and office equipment on a central server, integrated with multiple asset-management and maintenance software systems.
The five-year contract was awarded to CodeSource, with RFID Global Solution serving as partner for the deployment, and calls for fixed reader portals, handheld readers and carts to interrogate passive UHF RFID tags on data equipment, IT assets and office furniture. The contract also includes active RFID sensor tags, to track whether cabinet doors are left open, and to monitor temperatures and other environmental conditions.
At the center of the solution is RFID Global Solution's Visi-Trac software, with integration and installation services provided by RFID Global Solution and CodeSource. Motorola fixed and handheld readers will interrogate Confidex tags attached to assets. RF Code will provide the active RFID sensor tags used at the data centers, according to Thomas Manzagol, RFID Global Solution's founder and COO.
In September 2012, CodeSource and RFID Global Solution won an initial contract for an RFID system to track servers at the 100,000-square-foot Woodlawn data center. To fulfill that contract, RFID Global Solution attached passive UHF hard-cased Confidex Steelwave Micro tags to 15,000 servers, and also supplied its Visi-Trac software to manage the collected read data from fixed reader portals at the data center's exit, as well as handhelds used to capture inventory data from servers and other IT equipment stored in racks (see Social Security Administration Tracks Data-Center Assets). By last spring, the SSA reported a 90 percent reduction in inventory tracking labor.
This summer, RFID Global Solution installed the same technology to track 15,000 servers at the SSA's 100,000-square-foot data center in Raleigh-Durham, N.C. With the new contract, the firm will deploy the solution at a third SSA data center—a new 400,000-square-foot facility, located in Urbana, Md.—where approximately 36,000 servers will be tagged. What's more, several expansions to the system will be provided at the Woodlawn and Raleigh-Dunham sites.
For instance, while personnel at the Woodlawn and Raleigh-Dunham data centers have employed Motorola MC9190-Z handheld readers to read tagged IT assets, the process still requires that workers sweep those devices past each rack, and so the SSA was interested in finding a faster solution. RFID Global Solution is now providing a wheeled audit cart that comes with a more powerful Motorola reader: the FX7400. Staff members can roll the cart through each aisle and quickly read all tags on every rack. The audit carts will be added to the existing data-center systems, Manzagol says, and be part of the new installation in Urbana.
In addition, the SSA will use some of RF Code's 433 MHz R120 door tags that can track the opening and closing of doors on enclosed server racks, and transmit that information to an RF Code M220 mobile reader, in conjunction with either a handheld computer or an audit cart. In some cases, sensor tags that measure either temperature or both temperature and humidity can be used for the purpose of environmental monitoring. In such a deployment, if temperatures become too high within specific areas of the data center, a worker would be alerted to that development, while conducting a scheduled audit, by the Visi-Trac software—for example, in an e-mail or text message, or displayed on the software for the employee using the cart.
At present, the systems already installed at two data centers include fixed portal readers, which detect when assets are being removed from the facility—to be repaired, for instance. The interrogators forward an asset's tag ID number to the Visi-Trac software, which can issue an alert to the staff, as well as trigger a horn serving as an alarm at the doorway, if an item is not permitted to be removed. With the next contract, the SSA will also include a similar fixed reader at each data center's shipping and receiving area. Here, the portal will interrogate the tags of goods being loaded onto or unloaded from vehicles—for example, if they are being moved from one data center to another. In this way, the SSA will have a record not only of what has left the data center itself, but also of what was loaded onto a particular vehicle, when this occurred and when it was then received at another location. In the event that an asset's removal is unauthorized, an alert will be triggered.
In addition, the SSA intends to begin tracking all of its office equipment and furniture, using UHF tags at its regional offices and data centers. According to Manzagol, everything from computer monitors and printers to PCs and laptops could be tagged, as well as all office furnishings, using a variety of models of RFID tags supplied by Resource LabelGroup, and Metalcraft for some assets containing a large degree of metal.
All data will be received and managed by the Visi-Trac software, currently residing locally at the data-center sites. This year, however, RFID Global Solution is installing its software on a central Social Security Administration server that will be accessible by all SSA offices. Visi-Trac will be integrated with approximately five other software systems managed by the SSA, including Hewlett-Packard's HP Asset Manager (HPAM) software, which manages information regarding all of the agency's assets, as well as software dedicated to sending work orders or tracking maintenance.
The regional offices are unlikely to all be equipped with fixed readers, but they may utilize a handheld to locate and inventory those office assets, thereby saving labor time and ensuring that equipment does not end up missing. Altogether, Manzagol says he expects the SSA to use about 500,000 tags for tracking data-center assets, as well as millions of other tags for tracking office equipment.
Manzagol predicts that the Urbana data-center installation should be completed by early 2014, and that the centralized software should be in operation by that time as well. The tagging of assets at the regional offices will extend throughout the contract's five-year period.
Next week, as part of RFID Journal's RFID in High-Tech conference and exhibition, Diana Hage, RFID Global Solution's CEO, will discuss how the SSA and other organizations are employing RFID solutions to obtain real-time business intelligence, faster, more accurate inventor counts, and improved asset utilization and accountability.
