Building on the RFID middleware of its mobile applications iAnywhere subsidiary Sybase has launched its RFID Enterprise software suite, comprising a range of software products designed to collect and manage RFID data and integrate it into any enterprise data management environment.
Sybase’s RFID Enterprise offering sits atop iAnywhere’s RFID Anywhere middleware, which connects RFID readers to enterprise applications and mobile devices such as handheld computers (see iAnywhere’s RFID Middleware for Mobility). Since its initial release in March, RFID Anywhere has been upgraded with additional functions, including message storing and forwarding and support for multiple ISO and EPC RFID standards so that a single RFID network can aggregate RFID data into a single format.
RFID Enterprise consists of the RFID Open Database Schema and Persistence Layer, RFID Business Process, Integration and Monitoring software and RFID Reporting applications. The Sybase RFID Open Database Schema and Persistence Layer application provides a way to standardize and automate the loading of RFID data into any SQL database, as well as provide a specialized RFID database schema (such as associating the EPCs of tagged products with the EPC of the tagged pallet the products are being shipped on) for storing other data required to maintain the business context of RFID-collected data.
According to Sybase, about 40 percent of the work required to match the database schema to any specific implementation is ready “out of the box,” leaving companies to customize the rest of the work to match their requirements.
The RFID Business Process, Integration and Monitoring software is used to create business processes that require RFID data. It also provides integration of the RFID network into a company’s existing enterprise resource planning (ERP) or warehouse management system (WMS) application through data mapping, reformatting, business rules and real-time monitoring of event streams.
Sybase’s RFID Reporting application includes the ability to commission ad-hoc RFID reports of consolidated RFID data.
Sybase maintains its RFID Enterprise bundle can be implemented as a complete solution or can be used to fill out any deployment where customers already have database software from other vendors.
“RFID Enterprise will work with databases and schemas from Oracle and Microsoft and applications from rival vendors including SAP and others. We have built this to create synergies between Sybase products, but it is no harder to deploy with incumbent products,” says Chris Foley, director of RFID and machine-to-mobile technology at iAnywhere, a Dublin, Calif., wholly subsidiary of wireless application provider Sybase.
Sybase says the RFID Enterprise suite is available immediately and that it is already being used to with early-adopter customers such as Cesar Castillo, a wholesale distributor and third-party logistics company that specializes in product distribution in the consumer packaged goods and pharmaceutical industries.
Cesar Castillo is using Sybase RFID Enterprise software as part of an ongoing RFID deployment to help manage its inventory, eliminate data entry errors and reduce the time and effort necessary to perform physical inventory checks within its pharmaceutical operation. The deployment is using UHF ISO 18000-6 RFID inlays embedded in paper tags that hang around the necks of pharmaceutical bottles to track the bottles as they move through the company’s 300,000-square-foot warehouse and distribution center in San Juan, Puerto Rico.
The RFID Enterprise starter kit is priced at $50,000, including the RFID Anywhere product, or $20,000 without RFID Anywhere. The starter kit is limited to 20 connected devices. When used for larger deployments, RFID Enterprise will be priced according to seat, server and CPU numbers.