Pierre Metivier, Co-Founder & Product Marketing and Innovation Consultant - NET-7

How is your organisation involved with RFID technology?
NET-7 is a network of consultants and executives specialized in information technology and communication, devoted to helping companies to develop their business through operational and strategical support. Within NET-7, I personally help companies to understand and integrate new digital technologies — and specifically those around contactless applications and the Internet of Things — into their development and innovation cycles.

What are your impressions of RFID in the business world today?
RFID isn't just an idea anymore, it's a real thing. There are many examples of live deployments of RFID, especially in the "business to business" world, supply chains, transportation, retail, identification, ticketing, and more. What will really make RFID bigger and more visible is when it moves further into the "business to consumer" world.

When do you think that will happen?
Well, it's already happening of course — people use RFID all the time. When you badge your way into your office building, when you wave your subscription card at the turnstile of the Paris Metro or the London Tube, when you rent a bike at one of the many public bike stations in cities across Europe and elsewhere, when you drive your car through the subscriber lane at the toll booth on the highway, you are already using RFID applications.  But I think the real tipping point will be when RFID applications arrive in our pockets within our smart phones through the use of Near Field Communication, or NFC technology. NFC phones will give us access to many applications, some we already know, and many others yet to be invented. The industry is expecting mobile telephones to be equipped with NFC starting in 2011.

What makes using RFID special or different?
With RFID, companies can create applications that don't require physical contact like you need with today's credit cards, and they can also create applications that don't need "line of sight readability" like you need with bar codes. With RFID, you don't press a button, you don't insert a card into a slot. There is no contact, no touching – just a gesture. It's like a magic wand! And what's more, this technology can be applied to different form factors such as a phone, a bracelet, a car key, or a USB stick. That leads to a different way of thinking and many potential new usages.

What predictions do you have for the future of RFID?
It's very hard to imagine what is coming, to be honest — but partly because there is so much that can be done with RFID, especially if it is combined with other technologies such as a mobile phone network, real-time localisation systems, or any one of a variety of sensors. The retail sector is very active with RFID. I do expect to see a great increase in the use of this technology in retail — not only for supply chain and inventory but also for customer loyalty and payment cards, for example. RFID is a key technology to develop what is known as the Internet of Things, where objects will have a form of "intelligence." For instance, a pack of yogurts in the supermarket could put itself on sale when it knows that it is getting close to its expiration date.

One of the challenges is going to be managing open and closed systems. The Internet was and is successful because it was built on clearly defined open standards. As a natural extension of this, many companies today have intranets, which are closed systems built on the open model of the Internet. But it's working the other way around for RFID and the Internet of Things: some companies are building closed RFID systems that are not based on open global standards.  That means their RFID systems won't be able to talk to other RFID systems. A global and open Internet of Things will be harder to create as a result.

Some consumers are worried about privacy. Do you think RFID creates a privacy risk?
Privacy is an issue that has to be carefully taken into account, but it’s less an issue that people think. The same laws that apply to cell phones or credit cards apply to the RFID world. Most of the information encoded onto an RFID tag is just a product number. Without access to the information system of the company using the code, it’s meaningless. In a retail RFID tag, there is no information about the consumer. People are sharing much more personal information on their Facebook pages than will ever appear in the product RFID tag. Yes, privacy is a serious issue, but I sometimes think we are making too big a deal out of it. Consumers will be able to do things thanks to RFID just like they can now do things thanks to their cell phones. New technology always tends to frighten some people. These issues should not slow down the development of new RFID based applications

NET-7 is a network of consultants and executives specialized in information technology and communication and devoted to helping companies to develop their business through operational and strategical support. Visit http://www.net-7.fr/ for more information.

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