Today marked the official start of the BizTalk RFID Solutions Days conference. Showing up for the pre-conference reception was a good idea as the registration table was packed in this morning. Breakfast, lunch, afternoon snacks (including ice cream treats) and dinner were provided. There was no free WiFi available. It is possible that if you had a room at the hotel that you got access, but I saw plenty of people paying for WiFi though out the day.

Anush opened up the conference with a short welcoming presentation. His key point was that the goal of BizTalk RFID was to make it as easy to hook up RFID hardware, as it was to attach a mouse or other USB device. That is a pretty lofty goal, but from what I have seen and read, they are well on their way to accomplishing this. I will be able to comment more on this after I complete the training classes on Wednesday and Thursday.

Key Note

The keynote was delivered by John Fontanella from AMR Research, a company that specializes in researching technology for it's customers. This was a very good presentation about RFID as a technology, process and it's uses in business. John provided some good information which indicates that RFID will really start growing in another year or two.

Like RFID, barcodes faced a slow adoption process, going back to 1975 where an article in a grocery store industry magazine had a quote asking where the value was in barcodes. Now barcodes are everywhere and I doubt my generation even remembers a world without barcodes and from the numbers presented, we are headed the same with RFID.

One of the key points in the presentation was a claim that we have reached the "tipping point" of RFID, but that no one has really noticed yet. The evidence to support this is as follows:

• AMR is seeing an increase in the number of RFID inquiries
• Big Technology companies are back in the hunt for RFID solutions. Compare the list of attendees at this years RFID Live conference with years past and you should see an increase in large, well know companies
• Not dependent on Wal-Mart.
• Companies beginning to understand the value of RFID. In 1994, how many companies understood the value of a corporate web site?
• Large customer facing companies are starting to adopt RFID. An example I've seen, and that was brought up by an audience member, is the Ford RFID enabled pickup truck bed targeted at construction workers and companies.

Several slides in the presentation dealt with what is expected in the future, and how it will continue to drive RFID. For example, item level tagging is supposed to really take off starting in 2009, and one of the categories of targeted projects is Point of Sale, which depends on item level tagging. Terso has been doing item level tagging since it's inception a couple of years ago, so mass customer acceptance and familiarity with item level tagging is a positive development.

John made a comment on how in today's supply chains in the United States, that we have a 60 days supply worth of products, and that RFID and improved processes could help reduce how much back stock is in the supply chain, thus increasing efficiency. He asked if we really need a 60 days supply, and speculated we could get down to 7 days worth of back stock.

I actually find some re-assurance in that 60 day supply, as we are all extremely dependent on these supply chains for our survival (we are not exactly a country of farmers anymore). In the event of a wide spread terrorist attack or some kind of flu epidemic, that 2 months of supply chain back stock might actually equate to survival. Perhaps I've watched one to many end of the world movies lately.

Charles Johnson from Microsoft

The highlight of this presentation was the movie that Charles showed at the beginning, in which a product innovation was shown in an end to end solution starting with envisioning to the end consumer. The video starts out showing a formula one race car being monitored (Charles pointed out that Microsoft software is actually used in racing), and the focus shifted to the driver's seat, which is the product that was going to be developed.

The video changes to show a product management team working on a project plan on Microsoft Surface, both mounted on the wall, as well as in the table. Now Charles said that what we were seeing was real functioning software and hardware. Surface was showcased through out the video.

Some other highlights from the video included wearable headsets which overlayed assembly directions on the production line and RFID tracking of products, parts, and tools in the factory. The video concluded showing a end-customer building (on-line) and ordering a new car (which included the new seat), and the CEO using a Surface enabled desk to review sales data.

The rest of Charles's presentation was focused primarily on supply chain visibility and highlighted some Microsoft partners and the solutions they had developed. Some interesting things I picked up on was a hosted service provided by HP that allows BizTalk to talk to SAP via web services, and it sounded like Microsoft used SAP internally rather then Dynamics, but I'm not 100% sure on this.

There was an audience question at the end asking about the cost of BizTalk server (not the RFID version), and also commented that he thought it was too expensive. Charles responded that when you look at a TCO across an entire solution, BizTalk is a small portion of that. He also added that Microsoft is willing to work with companies to define a pricing model that will work for them.

Other

The rest of the presentations where done by some of the sponsors, and pretty much turned into sales pitches and statistical bragging. It's amazing how many different ways you can cut up the RFID solution space in order to claim you are a #1. While there were foot notes on the slides to "independent" 3rd party research, no one used the same company. Therefore, I will make the unsubstantiated claim that I am the number one blogger at BizTalk RFID solution days based on a set of criteria only known to me.

Companies presenting included Xterprise, who I thought was a systems integrator, but is actually a ISV, HP, Motorola, and Impinj. To be fair, the HP presentation was a 50/50 split between their implementation of RFID in manufacturing and supply chain and their enterprise services department. The Impinj presentation wasn't too bad, I liked the way they designed their firmware upgrades, and if their claims on power consumption (27W active power) are true, that would have some benefits.

We'll see what Day 2 holds.