Microsoft brings RFID to Biztalk

Microsoft has launched its BizTalk Server 2006 R2 with a heavy focus on embracing RFID technology.

The server software, which embraces service-orientated architecture and business process management, now includes RFID interoperability code to help companies use the tagging technology.

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Burley Kawasaki, director of product management at Microsoft, told silicon.com the cost and complexity - and the fact that the hardware is still evolving - make it difficult for businesses to adopt RFID technology.

Kawasaki said many companies are "swimming in mountains of RFID data" because they cannot detect which events are relevant to business processes.

Included in Microsoft's RFID-friendly tech is an abstraction layer to separate a company's application from the associated hardware and a rules layer to dig out the important bits of information.

Kawasaki added: "A problem of many of the early generation of RFID readers was that you would get duplicate reads or erroneous reads and so it's important to have this rules layer that filters out all the noise and only gives you those [reads] that are most important from a business events perspective."