Chirag Nanavati, Chief Marketing Officer, SoftDEL

"RFID hardware is getting cheaper and much more accessible, so the next innovations are going to happen with applications that use RFID."

Chirag Nanavati, Chief Marketing Officer, SoftDEL

How is your organisation involved with RFID technology?
SoftDEL works with a variety of OEM manufacturers, including manufacturers of RFID equipment. We do testing for RFID-based products and equipment that will be released in the near future. We also develop applications for next-generation products that employ RFID or other contactless transmission and detection technologies, and especially in retail-based article surveillance and anti-shoplifting technologies. Our clients come from all sorts of sectors — anyone who develops products for automated environments.

One of your solutions was recently awarded a prize at a trade show. What can you tell us about it?
Our "Aerodel Director" solution was indeed named “Best in Wireless Sensor Network & RFID 2010” at IDTechEx in Hong Kong in October 2010. Aerodel Director is a centralised industrial wireless network management system. A lot of companies today have all sorts of small wireless sensors sprinkled out around their plants, factories or office buildings. Our product allows such companies to graphically visualise and manage the wireless network that connects all those sensors, monitor link statistics, and if necessary, quickly identify and diagnose network problems that would otherwise be complicated and time-consuming to de-bug. As the world goes from wired to wireless, we're realizing that it's hard to manage things you cannot see. Our tools let a network administrator interface with multiple wireless technologies from multiple vendors to get a unified view of their installation.
    
What is your vision of RFID in the coming years?
RFID is one aspect of what we see as a very certain future for wireless sensor networks as a whole. RFID has already been fairly well implemented into certain types of applications in warehouses and retail environments. In the near future, we expect to see it get more deeply integrated into other applications as well. Take a consumer application for example: in the next few years mobile phones will have an RFID reader embedded, opening the door to possibilities for payment applications. RFID hardware is getting cheaper and much more accessible, so the next innovations are going to happen with applications that use RFID in one way or another. One challenge is educating the marketplace. The possibilities are almost limitless but people don't yet recognize that these sorts of applications could help them in their daily tasks.


SoftDEL is focused on providing industrial grade networking and control solutions for the global automation world. With over a decade of experience in executing large-scale and complex projects, SoftDEL engineering solutions have been delivered to global customers across the US, Europe, Japan and India. For more information, visit www.softdel.com