As Hype Becomes Reality, a Radio Frequency Identification Ecosystem Emerges
Michael Bittner - January 23, 2006

Background

Radio frequency identification (RFID) has been a major topic of discussion for a couple of years now, with Wal-Mart and the United States Department of Defense driving the attention already focused on this technology to a whole new level, thus triggering the corresponding RFID hype of the media, trade publications, and analyst community. Of particular interest has been the emergence of an RFID ecosystem of hardware, middleware, software, and services companies, which are all vying for prospects and attention. The emergence of an ecosystem is usually a good thing, because it drives technology innovation, facilitates competition, and brings both new solutions and the application of solutions to the fore. But the emergence of an ecosystem can also cause confusion, forcing enterprises looking to adopt RFID technology in either the short or long term to perform due diligence on vendors and services providers that are all espousing their particular RFID solution set or level of RFID domain expertise...