Solution Provider Rolls Out RFID Starter Kit

RFID system integrators and solution providers say the bulk of their RFID projects in the past year have involved closed-loop projects in such areas as asset management, instead of initiatives driven by the highly publicized mandates from Wal-Mart and the Department of Defense.

Symbol Technologies also saw increasing interest in asset management in 2006 and expects that to continue this year. About 30 percent of Symbol's new beta trials last year were for managing assets as diverse as vehicles, IT equipment and cargo containers, as companies look to improve the flow, use, security and quantity of their assets.

Fluensee will sell its new starter kit, called RFID Asset Track Express, both direct and through the channel. The Express version includes asset-tracking software, a ruggedized handheld RFID reader, and a couple hundred passive RFID tags. It costs around $10,000.

"Assets have activity around them, and we can use RFID to capture that movement, status and changes and to generate alerts," said Tim Harvie, president and CEO of Fluensee, Englewood, Colo. "With this, they don't have to be experts in RFID hardware, middleware or asset-management solutions to take advantage of RFID."