• Investment World
• eWorld
• Catalyst
• Mentor
• Life
• Canvas
• Praxis
• Urban Pulse
• Brand Quest

Stocks

• Quotes
• SE Diary
• Scoreboard
• Open-End Mutual Fund

Port Info

• Ships in Ports
  
  

Archives

• Yesterday
• Datewise
• Resources

Group Sites

• The Hindu
• Business Line
• The Sportstar
• Frontline
• The Hindu eBooks
• The Hindu Images

Our Bureau

Pune , Jan. 8

THE Pune-based Persistent System has been invited by Microsoft Technologies to be part of its newly formed Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) Council where it will be among the small group of vendors who will advise the company and its clients on RFID implementations globally.

Microsoft has zoomed in on Persistent's solution, PINES, for its RFID applications in retail space.

Mr Anand Deshpande, Chairman and Managing Director, Persistent, said the company has already deployed retail applications of RFID at Microsoft's Technology Centre at Redmond in Seattle and will also replicate it at ten other locations including Taipei, Dubai and Beijing in the coming months. ``This opportunity will provide significant global to our PINES middleware,'' he said.

With retail majors such as Wal-mart insisting that its top 100 suppliers adopt RFID technology for its consignments by end 2005, players expect the technology to take off in the next two years. RFID in the retail space could mean that retailers can have more efficient operations in terms of tracking merchandise, cutting costs on actually loading and un loading them to track inventories and detecting fraud and theft.

`` Early adopters of the technology are already trying it out in the pilot form with some of their products but our effort and that of Microsoft is to catch the second lot of adopters and SMEs,'' Mr Deshpande said.

Persistent Systems started this initiative as part of its thrust into wireless sensor networks and has a 20-member team focusing on solutions development and IP creation around it. While Microsoft will recommend its product to clients seeking to implement RFID systems, Persistent is also independently talking to players in the ERP, CRM and related fields for OEM deals, said Mr Deshpande.

In addition to retail, Microsoft has also sounded the company out for a possible association later in the manufacturing space, he added.

Persistent Systems is a player in outsourced software product development and has on its client list Oracle, Microsoft, Agilent, NCR, Openwave and i2. The company currently has 1,450 professionals on board and with a growth rate of over 80 per cent this year, is expecting to ramp up head count to 1,600 by March.

Article E-Mail :: Comment :: Syndication :: Printer Friendly Page

Stories in this Section
NTPC plans entry into power transmission

Copyright © 2005, The Hindu Business Line. Republication or redissemination of the contents of this screen are expressly prohibited without the written consent of The Hindu Business Line