Oracle, e6data, EMVCo: RFID News Roundup

Published: September 19, 2024

Oracle Helps Healthcare Organizations Automate Inventory Management with RFID

Oracle is now offering  a RFID-based replenishment solution in Oracle Fusion Cloud Supply Chain & Manufacturing (SCM) to help healthcare customers optimize inventory management.

The new RFID for Replenishment solution in Oracle Fusion Cloud Inventory Management utilizes RFID technologies from Avery DennisonTerso Solutions, and Zebra Technologies to automatically capture usage, update stock balances, track location, and trigger restocking of supplies and materials. RFID for Replenishment helps healthcare organizations increase productivity, expand inventory insights, and prevent delays by helping ensure the right amount of stock is in the right location at the right time.

“We’re collaborating with leading RFID vendors to deliver an end-to-end solution that will allow healthcare organizations to automate stock replenishment, expand inventory visibility, improve productivity, and enable clinicians to spend less time looking for supplies and more time focusing on patients,” said said Chris Leone, executive vice president of applications development, Oracle.

With RFID for Replenishment in Oracle Inventory Management, healthcare organizations can track medical supplies, automate replenishment, gain real-time inventory visibility and reduce human error.

“Hospital staff need the right technology to instantly identify, track, and capture the location and status of critical resources in real time,” said Brent Brown, vice president, general manager, Advanced Locationing Technology, Zebra Technologies. “Our RFID readers and precise location tracking provides real-time visibility into every item in Oracle Inventory Management. This technology helps our customers work in new ways to expand inventory visibility, streamline the operations of front-line clinicians and deliver better care.”

e6data Raises $10m to Dismantle Lock-In from Data Intelligence Vendors on Analytics, AI

Focused on the skyrocketing compute for data intelligence, e6data has completed a $10 million funding round as it offers processing efficiencies that halves the bill of enterprises seeking to analyze their vast troves of data. The series A funding round was led by Accel with participation from Beenext and others.

Data intelligence platforms are critical to enterprises seeking to extract value from their hundreds of data sources through essential workloads like data engineering, BI and analytics, machine learning, and now generative AI. The total addressable market for data and AI solutions is slated to touch $230 billion in 2025, with 60 percent of CXOs expecting to increase their spend over the next year.

“This rapid increase has made data intelligence platforms the second largest IT spending category – behind only cloud spend for operational systems and application infrastructure,” Vishnu Vasanth, co-founder and CEO said. “It’s fueling the meteoric rise of data warehouse and data lakehouse companies such as Snowflake and Databricks, and the rapid growth of corresponding offerings from AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud”.

To address these challenges, e6data has developed a new breed of “compute engine” for data intelligence platforms that helps enterprises amplify ROI on their existing platforms and architectures and escape ecosystem lock-in. e6data plans to expand access to its Design Partner Program, which offers the e6data solution as a managed service for the heaviest or most pressing use-cases of enterprise customers, complete with production support and professional services.

The company reported it has already signed up publicly listed Fortune 500 enterprises as well as high-growth companies as customers. It is anticipating growth due to rising demand for compute-intensive heavy workloads across high-volume data products, advanced analytics on near real-time data, and production-grade generative AI applications.

EMVCo releases new testing service for TapToMobile transactions

EMVCo has launched a dedicated testing approval process to promote a more seamless experience when smartphones and other handheld mobile devices are used to accept contactless payments —known as TapToMobile.

TapToMobile allows merchants to accept contactless payments directly on near field communication (NFC)-enabled consumer and enterprise devices, without the need for an additional connected device, dongle or attachment. The quality of the TapToMobile user experience is dependent on NFC read ranges, which determine how close and precisely positioned the payment device needs to be to the acceptance device for payment information to flow.

“Advancing and evolving testing processes to reflect emerging industry developments is integral to promoting consistent, convenient and secure payments worldwide,” comments Aaron Armstrong, EMVCo Executive Committee Chair. “The introduction of reduced range approval testing addresses the need to enhance the TapToMobile payment experience, enabling EMVCo and industry participants to start measuring the performance of TapToMobile devices and provide feedback on improving read range over time.”

EMVCo launched its initiative in response to direct feedback from merchants and the wider payments community, emphasizing improvement of the user experience when consumer and enterprise devices are used for contactless payment acceptance. The availability of approval testing follows extensive engagement and collaboration with EMVCo Associates, along with input from EMVCo Subscribers and other industry participants including device manufacturers and NFC chipset makers. EMVCo has also worked closely with industry partners such as NFC Forum and PCI SSC to maintain interoperability across respective initiatives.

“As we gather this data, EMVCo plans to communicate a roadmap for adapting the acceptance criteria to bring the experience delivered by TapToMobile devices closer to that of traditional payment terminals,” Armstrong added.

The Reduced Range Level 1 Type Approval Process defines two reduced range compliance levels with different requirements relating to read range and positioning as outlined within the existing EMV Contactless Interface Specification.

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