This article was originally published by RFID Update.
January 5, 2005—According to ABI Research of Oyster Bay, New York, 2005 will see two significant shifts in the way retailer suppliers implement RFID. The first is a broadening of RFID deployments. As 2004 was mostly about racing to meet retailer RFID mandate deadlines, quickie deployments were rushed and ad-hoc; many suppliers ended up spending as little as possible, just aiming for a working slap-and-ship solution. With the deadline now behind them, these suppliers have the luxury of more deliberately taking advantage of RFID and expanding its application throughout the enterprise. Some companies are increasing their budgets by three- or even five-fold, according to ABI’s Erik Michielsen.
The second shift will be away from smaller, pure-play RFID vendors towards larger and more established technology service providers. In 2004 and earlier, small RFID-specific vendors worked aggressively to help suppliers meet mandates. But now, with the aforementioned plans to really begin the supply chain transformation, suppliers will seek the assistance of traditional technology partners like SAP, Sun, Cisco, IBM, and Microsoft. Even though these partners are not specialized RFID shops, they can provide an all-important sense of comfort, familiarity, and experience to suppliers who themselves still feel ill-informed with respect to RFID.
You can read the press release at ABI Research’s site
