"RFID is inevitable"

BANGALORE: Acknowledged as the father of RFID technology, Dr Sanjay Sarma, is credited with co-founding the Auto ID center at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). He served as associate professor of mechanical engineering at MIT and research director of Auto-ID Center until when he joined OAT Systems as CTO last year. Priya Padmanabhan of CyberMedia News caught up with him in Bangalore to get his take on RFID technology and where it's headed.






It has been six years since RFID technology came out of the fold. What was the evolution of the technology like?



I am actually quite amazed at how far the entire industry has come in the last few years. The technology has progressed beyond my most optimistic estimates. Retailers have stepped up. Many forward thinking manufacturers have stepped up and are doing excellent work with RFID. The only surprise is that given the better than expected state of affairs, many companies are still taking a short-term view of the technology.






Why did you decide to make the switch from academia to business?


I want to be close to the action, and OAT Systems is at the heart of the RFID action. I want OAT to enable companies to achieve the next generation of IT and automation -- where the physical world and the information world are inseparably intertwined.

What are the plans for OAT Systems development center in Bangalore?

We are strongly focused on product development and we expect the Bangalore center headcount to exceed that of the US R&D team some years down the line. We will be incrementally hiring and slowly we intend to move more development to India. It is not for the cost but for the value of the talent and work that we have come to Bangalore.



A lot of offshore work in RFID is also happening. Our partnership with Infosys would help in deploying OAT Systems' RFID Software and both companies would follow a joint go-to-market strategy. We also work with hardware vendors and tag manufacturers and want to be hardware agnostic.





Is the technology in a hype cycle or are RFID deployments really taking off as expected?


RFID has certainly taken off. One does not get to hear about the implementation much. A lot of it is happening in Asia. There is also some reluctance in adopting new technology but, this will soon change with more and more major retailers following Walmart's example and mandating RFID for their suppliers. One cannot postpone the inevitable.


It has certainly taken off in the manufacturing sector and retail as well. For example, Ranbaxy has gone in for RFID technology at its Indian plant.





When do you think the cost of tags will go down? Will item level tagging happen soon?


The cost of tags depends on the volume of adoption. If the tags are ordered in millions, it works out to around 20 cents a tag. It is all volume driven. Item level tagging will happen rapidly. Very soon, we will see RFID applications in fields like pharmaceuticals where they would be deployed to track down spurious drugs. We hear about a lot of counterfeit AIDS drugs, which can be life threatening. I'm sure, verticals like the pharmaceutical industry would take it (item level tagging) up actively since it's a question of loss of life and health. The systems are not in place yet. Transportation would be another growth area.





What are the challenges to RFID adoption?


Frequency lanes-wavelengths have to be fixed. India and China are on the right track on this and hopefully, would allocate the frequency soon. This needs to be addressed as businesses could be affected. Data interference is a problem. RFID tags have to co-ordinate so that they don't interfere at the same time.


The doubts over privacy are valid and they need to be answered. But I'd like to stress that privacy concerns also stem because of lack of understanding.