Announcing RIFIDI® 3.3 Public Release, Providing Business Value Through Real Service & Real Solutions

Transcends is proud to announce that the RIFIDI® 3.3 public release is supported by market research we conducted with partners, clients and vendors, ensuring we continue to play a key role in “Connecting the Internet of Things (IoT) with People”. A key feature of the release is the Enterprise Rifidi® Management Dashboard that enables monitoring of multiple servers and sensors throughout the enterprise, providing actionable data to managers in real time.

Making the Case to Internal Clients and to External Customers

Transcends recently conducted market research interviews with partners, clients, vendors and other key players in the RFID/IoT community. We were happy to learn the community values our long term commitment, responsiveness, knowledge, Rifidi’s quality, and Transcends’ high level of customer service. We also identified areas where you want more help from us, primarily in educating end users and senior executives about the potential of RFID. Interviewees asked for improved marketing to help nontechnical people visualize the end-to-end applicability of Rifidi and appreciate more sophisticated use cases.

The following new section of our newsletter is designed to address this need and help nontechnical executives understand the Rifidi use case. Marketing upgrades to our web site will be next. Please let us know what you think, and share your examples with us so we can continue to spread the word for the RFID community.

Real Service, Real Solutions

Industrial Client Gains Competitive Advantage from Higher Productivity and Control of Inventory Costs

Increasing the level of process automation in industrial settings often provides a competitive advantage. More automation increases productivity, workflow throughput, quality and reliability, while reducing labor and inventory costs. Transcends’ Rifidi platform allows real-time visibility into your asset flow on an individual item level. Easy integration of that data with your ERP system (on premise or in the cloud) allows managers to access assets throughout your enterprise, ultimately increasing customer satisfaction. Rifidi enabled an apparel rental company to establish a new warehouse from the ground up within just a few months. A high level of process automation keeps costs low, with increased productivity and full visibility into item-level inventory at each step of the workflow.

Retail Clients Go Beyond Basic Inventory Tracking to Theft Warnings and Targeted Advertising

Regular brick-and-mortar stores struggle to achieve the real-time inventory accuracy consumers enjoy with online websites, yet retailers need such accuracy to successfully implement omni-channel strategies. While regular RFID technology can increase inventory visibility on the sales floor, Transcends’ Rifidi enables retailers to turn basic inventory data into smart data that triggers actionable business events. The Rifidi platform allows smart shelf solutions to alert sales clerks about stock out situations and possible thefts, allows marketing applications to deliver context-sensitive advertisements, informs store management about consumer and workforce behavior, and creates a more personalized shopping experience with smart mirrors. Using Rifidi to take advantage of local intelligence on the sales floor increases sales and improves customer satisfaction.
New features in the RIFIDI® Edge Server release include the following.

• Enterprise Rifidi Management Dashboard
• Integration with ThingWorx® Platform (including SDK example application) Note: ThingWorx™, a PTC (Nasdaq: PTC) business, provides the first platform designed to efficiently build and run the applications of today’s connected world.
• Extended Rifidi application management via Rest
• Validated Rifidi Edge on Galileo (Intel ) device
• Validated Rifidi Edge on Raspberry Pi 2 (ARM)
• Support for Ubuntu Snappy Core on Raspberry PI  (Internet of Things Operating System)
• SDK – ThingWorx/Rifidi integration sample application
• A few key bug fixes
• Backward compatibility with RIFIDI 1.3 and 2.x , 3.x applications & solutions
• Full RIFIDI 3.3 release notes

Accelerate your IoT adoption with RIFIDI®. Connect your RFID reader and sensor network. Analyze you sensor information in real-time and over time. Optimize your business processes. Integrate with the enterprise. Differentiate your products, solutions and organization. By utilizing the Power of RIFIDI®, the possibilities are boundless across many verticals (retail, healthcare, transportation, manufacturing, recreational) from global enterprises to local small and medium sized businesses.

Transcends constantly improves, updates and enhances our robust, open source Rifidi product to better meet users’ needs. Possible features for our next release, based on feedback from clients, community, projects, forums, collaborations and partnerships, include the following.

• Floor plan/Google Map sensor management dashboard
• Integration with visualizations/dashboards/analytic tools
• Pure configurable Rifidi Apps (no coding required)
• Rifidi App marketplace
• Rifidi App provisioning enabled via OSGi P2 infrastructure
• Support for other Java IDEs such as NetBeans
• Framework upgrades/additions (Spring, Maven and Provisioning)
• Further security integration
• Additional features based on suggestions from community