The use case is that when you walk through a plant or distribution facility, you’d like to be able to have the same visibility when troubleshooting a problem as you have back in the office or control room. The new capabilities will extend BizTalk Server’s RFID adapters to work on Windows Mobile or CE-based devices. Microsoft supplies the APIs, to which device providers write drivers that are supposed to be plug-and–play, much like computer peripherals are today.

The idea behind it is to bring down the price point of such solutions, which until now were primarily a custom market. In part, you could call this a chicken and egg scenario as RFID entered their hype phase roughly five years ago. It has had niche uses, such as tags for automated highway tolling, but otherwise failed to catch fire. Chalk that up to one failed Wal-Mart edict later (at one point, it was going to require its top hundred suppliers to have RFID capability), not to mention matters like device costs, contentment with existing auto ID technologies, physical constraints such as dealing with RF interference common in plans and warehouses, and privacy concerns for products bought by consumers at retail.

Microsoft believes that device price curves have declined sufficiently to make sense for a Microsoft-style, everyman solution at Microsoft price points. It already has support commitments from RFID tag providers like Motorola, Uniteq, Intermec, Samsung, and Psion.

---