We all likely know the heartbreak of a lost smartphone, or a lost tablet, but imagine how much worse that loss is at the data center level, when entire chunks of inventory and major assets go missing. Many of these “lost” assets can be attributed to lack of updates in the asset database, but Intel (News - Alert) may have a solution for these losses in the form of new radio frequency identification (RFID) systems built into standard Intel chipsets.
The RFID systems are intended to replace more standard systems like barcode scanning, and also provide a measure of automation to the record-keeping. While Intel isn't the first to do such a thing by any means—reports suggest that asset tracking with active RFID is already available from some third-party vendors—the fact that Intel's looking to get in on this action may make any move in this direction particularly credible.
Couple that with a clear market demand for such systems and the end result seems clear. AOL (News - Alert), for example, represents a major force in the market demanding RFID capability; AOL manages assets numbered, at last report, in the “tens of thousands”, and that makes any inventory-related operation a huge undertaking. Word is that it took about two days—and an untold number of workers described by AOL's Scott Killian as “many”—to perform barcode scanning on all the various assets in just one of AOL's 90,000 square foot spaces. While RFID would have dropped that time through the floor, reports suggest that deploying such a system would have run AOL anywhere from $500,000 to a full million, a prohibitively high expense. Still, the standard way of doing things can be problematic, as described by Intel data center solutions manager Jeff Klaus; Klaus described how in some firms, there were data center operators who had no idea just what assets were under the firm's control.
But if Intel starts putting RFID systems directly into the chipset, it would not only become an industry standard—thanks to the sheer number of systems that use Intel chipsets—but it would also be readily picked up by most any data center. Users would be able to perform inventory with one augmented reality device, potentially even a head-mounted display like Google (News - Alert) Glass.
This has a huge potential to not only make data centers better by being clearly aware of what devices are on hand at which time, but also making it much easier to perform those inventory update functions. Plus, it's likely that Intel—who already holds a pretty substantial portion of the market—would be able to seize even more of it as it offered up a service on-board that might have cost in the upper six figures or beyond to add after the fact.
If Intel actually brings RFID directly to the chipset, it could fundamentally shake up the data center market as we know it today. It's likely to be a while before we see just how this ends up, but Intel might have a masterstroke waiting in its back pocket.
Edited by Maurice Nagle