The two companies said that they will also attempt to help companies overcome the common hurdles they face in creating viable business cases for radio frequency identification (RFID) implementations.
The joint effort will offer customers the choice of either integrating their RFID hardware directly into back-end systems and business processes or using device management partners to manage their hardware environment. It is hoped that this will enable the customer to manage a more complex environment comprising multiple device types from different vendors.
Companies can implement the software on any Intel-based RFID back-end hardware such as servers and front-end hardware such as desktops, notebooks and RFID readers, regardless of provider. According to the firms, this will likely result in faster adoption of RFID devices.
In addition, Intel will supply the necessary technology to allow for a device management solution to be delivered through the SAP NetWeaver platform.
One limitation of the alliance is that it will not be tackling the requirements of administrating, monitoring and managing all the different RFID devices. However, SAP has already established collaborations with other vendors to focus on this aspect of the technology. The new approach between Intel and SAP will focus primarily on the direct data exchange between reader hardware and business applications.
