Tibco Offers RFID Middleware

Tibco Software Inc. has begun offering RFID Interchange, new middleware designed to integrate the data gathered from radio-frequency identification devices, such as printers and readers, into business processes.

A primary goal of businesses using RFID to track goods in their supply chains is to gather information on the product and feed it into a business process. For example, an RFID reader can read information on a box at the receiving dock, and RFID Interchange can orchestrate the delivery of that information to software managing inventory and asset-management processes. Tibco's experience as a provider of middleware is based on years of providing integration capabilities to the financial-services industry.

More companies are looking to RFID to track and trace information across business partners and processes in their supply chains, says Dushyant Pandya, Tibco's director of solutions. "The RFID benefits companies can gain are unique to their needs," he says.

RFID Interchange supports EPC Global's Application Level Event specifications, most commonly used in the retail and consumer-goods sectors, allowing EPC-compliant applications to be interoperable with the middleware. RFID Interchange supports EDI and Web-services standards, as is designed to work with any number of business applications, including warehouse-management systems and enterprise resource planning platforms.