Search the archive: |
| | |
Sun Microsystems has launched its new 'Sun RFID Industry Solution for Physical Asset Tracking' - a combination of products and services to help companies design and integrate RFID solutions for physical asset tracking.
Asset tracking is increasingly becoming a more important issue as companies try to get a better grip on the status and location of critical assets and inventory. Sun's new solution uses an RFID-based RTLS (real-time locating system) to track assets and to issue alerts when they are not in their designated places. The system also has features to help managers plan and monitor asset usage.
Vijay Sarathy, director of RFID product marketing and strategy at Sun, said: "With our recent acquisition of SeeBeyond, we look forward to enhancing this offering by providing a development environment from which to build and deploy process-centric applications that maximise asset tracking information."
Test deployments
The system has already been deployed internally at two locations: the Sun Shared Lab Facility in Newark, California, USA, and the Sun Tradeshow Equipment Distribution Center in Milpitas (also in California). In the Sun Newark Shared Lab Project, the company plans to maintain 10,000+ servers and computing devices within a 6,000 square foot facility. The system can verify the location and physical characteristics (type, age, expiration date, temperature and movements) of all assets at the facility within one hour (and all without a network connection).
The Sun Tradeshow Equipment Distribution Center manages several thousand assets for events and tradeshows. Several times a week, shipments of various sizes are sent from the 5,000 square foot warehouse. At any time, the location and status of each asset is known, and any errors (such as equipment missing from a shipment) is spotted immediately. The RFID system has already reduced labour requirements and error rates.
Technologies
The system combines Sun's Solaris 10 Operating System, Sun Java Enterprise System and Sun Java System RFID Software. The solution is packaged with third-party components and applications, such as the RFID-enabled mobile asset management system from Applied Logistics Solutions, and works with many commonly available RFID readers (including the Intermec IF5 intelligent reader and Intelleflex ultra-long-range battery-assisted semi-passive RFID tags and readers).
Source: Sun Microsystems Inc.
|
