Frequently Asked Questions

How do you avoid having all this data about individual products overload existing networks?

The Auto-ID Center created software technology called Savants to manage and move information in a way that doesn’t overload existing corporate and public networks. Savants use a distributed architecture, meaning the software runs on different computers distributed through an organization, rather than from one central computer. Savants are organized in a hierarchy and act as the nervous system of the new EPC network, managing the flow of information. At the edge of the network, Savants gather data from readers. They pass on only relevant information to existing business applications, such as which products are about to expire. A Savant running at a distribution center might determine when product needs to be reordered from manufacturers, and so on. EPCglobal is phasing out the name “Savants”. Middleware companies have developed commercial products that do what Savants were designed to do.