OAT Systems to lead RFID Auto ID tech adoption blitz

Someday, your refrigerator will indeed talk to the milk packets and order
replenishment and your gene-based personalized medicine will have an RFID tag
that knows all about you. Sanjay Sarma, 36-year-old pioneer of Radio Frequency Auto-ID technology and
the head of Auto-ID Center at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, has
recently moved on to the board of OAT Systems Inc to commercialize the
technology. In an interview Sarma talks about the challenges ahead and what
gives OAT its edge in the Auto-ID market.

Sanjay Sarma

What prompted you to move to OAT Systems and what happened
to the Auto-ID Center?

After making the technology possible and basic standard setting, we retired
the Auto-ID Center in November 2003 to make way for a non-profit entity- EPC
Global. A JV between EAN International and Uniform Code Council, EPC Global took
over the responsibility of further refining and setting the standards and I have
decided to work on commercializing the technology. So, I moved on to the Board
of OAT Systems. I felt it was the best fit culturally and technology-wise as
well. I also officiate as its CTO and am involved with the day-to-day
functioning of the company.

What gives OAT an edge in the Auto-ID market?

The fact that OAT has attracted $11.5 million in its first round of VC
funding proves that not only we are in the hot technology, but also have the
right mix of talent to make it all work. Prasad Putta, the founder of the
company, was a grad student of mine. His company OAT has also worked closely
with the Auto-ID center to develop many of the key standards and technology that
make commercial deployment of RFID possible. OAT Systems understands the
technology. Moreover, the company headquartered in Watertown, Massachusetts has
put the technology to use and developed a product Senseware that provides a
standards-based RFID solution for companies in retail, manufacturing and
logistics markets. We have our India development center located in Hyderabad and
are planning expansion. Our next version of Senseware is scheduled to be
released in the first quarter of 2004. With 15 clients, most of the RFID
deployment that has happened and is happening in the market is by OAT.

What is OAT doing to maintain its lead?

It has been just three months since OAT decided on the technology and raised
its first round of VC funding from Matrix Partners and Greylock. Today, we are
already working at modularizing the middleware so that building and integrating
applications on top of that becomes easy. We are working with a number of
integration partners and will maintain the lead because RFID is a fairly complex
technology application to master. With RFID, the implementation complexities
increase with the size of implementation. We understand the technology and
people know that we understand the technology, courtesy our association with it
right from the beginning. That settles it for us.

Can the cost of Auto-ID be brought down to speed adoption?

We have already brought it down to five cents. The cost will come down
further with the volumes now. We are running the pilot projects for many
companies. Gillette is of course our flagship customer as are most of the
sponsors of the technology at MIT Auto-ID Center. However, we are focusing on
pharma and retail segment.

What other areas the technology will find application in?

In the long run it will be pretty much everywhere that you will have
controlled environment. Most of the IT deals with cleaning up of bad
information, bringing reality and perception closer. This becomes more important
when the logistics are huge and the processes complex.

Nandita Singh in Hyderabad