Industry Perspective: Take Advantage Of New RFID Opportunities

By Brian Albright, Business Solutions magazine.

For many years, RFID (radio frequency identification) deployment was primarily the domain of very large companies that could afford to produce or purchase large numbers of RFID tags and readers, often in conjunction with their suppliers and customers. But with reader and tag costs dropping and reliability increasing, there are a myriad of RFID opportunities for much smaller deployments and targeted, closed-loop applications.

"The main thing is to keep your mind open to new opportunities in RFID," says Mark Strobel, vice president of sales and marketing at Primera Technology. "Not everything is going to require these massive, multi-node applications. There are many more small- to midsize end users that are ready to deploy RFID now."

Primera is in a somewhat unique position when it comes to evaluating RFID opportunities. Although the company has been in the printer business for years, it is a relatively new entrant into the RFID market. Primera has been partnering with vertical integrators for their on-demand, color RFID printers, and Strobel says that these smaller applications are the new sweet spot for the industry.

Evidence tracking, asset tracking, and document tracking are some of the areas where VARs could potentially profit from relatively quick-hit installations with a large number of smaller customers.

"We'd all like to item track everything in the world, but in the meantime there are all these other RFID opportunities out there that are happening now. It's a different way of looking at the RFID market than we would have five or 10 years ago."