IT MEASUREMENT REPORT PACKAGE
Save $2,000 Off META Group's IT Measurement Report Package
Get more value from your IT measurement initiatives. The IT Measurement
Report Package combines the global performance data from the 2004
Worldwide IT Benchmark Report with the measurement program best
practices found in META Group's new IT Measurement Desk Reference.
To download a complimentary executive summary for both reports, visit:
http://www.metagroup.com/info/ismeasurement14
This special offer is only available until December 31, 2003, so contact
us today:
Call: 800-498-META [6382]
E-mail: info@metagroup.com
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
FEATURED RESEARCH
MR. GRAMMAR SAYS... "PORTAL" IS AN ADJECTIVE, NOT A NOUN
Despite years of maturation of the portal market, vendors and corporate
Web site project owners are still abusing the term "portal," using it to
mean the Web site equivalent of "newfangled." As with "knowledge
management" before it, hype and linguistic abuse of the term "portal"
have turned it into a dirty word in some organizations. This is
unfortunate, because portal concepts have proven valuable and represent
best practices for interfaces and integration aimed at end-user
consumption. It's also unfortunate because the vendors in the portal
market have valuable product to offer with significant potential return
on investment that will be overlooked if the term is vague, becomes
associated with large-scale failures in other organizations, or is
simply another area of technology where hype drives overinvestment.
Click here to read the full text of this META Group article (free member
login required).
http://www.metagroup.com/memberinfo/43637
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
2004 CIO BOOT CAMP
April 27-29 - Reston, Virginia
Mark your calendars now to join us in Reston, Virginia, next April for
META Group's first CIO Boot Camp of 2004. META Group's CIO Boot Camps
have become consistent sellouts since their inception in 1999 with more
than 900 "graduates." The 2004 agenda will be loaded with valuable and
timely information, providing you with the latest tools and insights you
need to excel as a CIO. Join us - again or for the first time - to take
advantage of the most informative, incisive, and interactive opportunity
available for CIO development and ongoing education. Register online or
call (802) 872-7350.
http://www.metagroup.com/eventagenda/cio0404
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
AUDIO BRIEFING
GETTING REAL WITH ENHANCED FILE TRANSFER
Many organizations find that the basic file transfer protocol (FTP)
capabilities are not enough when it comes to sophisticated file
movements, particularly between companies. Traditionally dominated by a
few electronic commerce/EDI-focused players, the emergence of new
standards (e.g., AS2) has the potential to dramatically change this
marketplace as these capabilities become more tightly tied to overall
integration solutions. To learn more about this topic, listen to this
audio briefing by META Group analysts Mark Shainman and Val Sribar and
view the accompanying slides.
Click here to listen to this briefing (free member login required).
http://www.metagroup.com/memberinfo/45692
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
2004 IT PRIORITIES IN THE INSURANCE INDUSTRY
Business and IT executives in the insurance industry are invited to
participate today in a complimentary META Group program that will
improve your awareness of trends impacting the industry in 2004 and how
companies in various market segments are reacting. To take advantage of
this offer, simply complete our brief online survey about IT challenges.
You will then be invited, as our guest, to attend a special
teleconference with META Group's Insurance Information Strategies
analysts, who will provide detailed analytical commentary and responses
to your questions about the current state of IT projects and strategic
plans across the industry. You will also receive the survey data,
enabling you to compare your IT agenda point-by-point to the aggregated
responses of other firms in your segment and industry. Furthermore, you
will be invited to a follow-up IIS presentation, providing a mid-2004
checkpoint for how trends and priorities are evolving.
Please click here to take advantage of this free program. Questions,
feedback or suggestions? Contact our SVP & Service Director John Flynn
at (212) 367-9196.
http://www.metagroup.com/surveys/insurance.html
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
FEATURED ARTICLE
RFID SECURITY SCARES IGNORE FACTS
In the wake of announcements by Wal-Mart that it would require radio
frequency identification (RFID) tags on cases/pallets of products to
facilitate tracking - and may require tags on individual products
eventually - scare stories concerning possible use of these tags to
violate individual privacy have been surfacing. Such stories ignore not
only common sense and practicality, but also the basic physics that
govern the potential of these tags. Both the public and the retailers
considering tag use need to understand these basic facts before they can
enter meaningful debate on the use of the technology.
Situation Analysis: The RFID debate has entered the public forum in
recent months, driven on one side by an often overoptimistic view of the
technology by potential retail and wholesale users and on the other by
even wilder misapprehensions about the use of this technology to gather
intrusive levels of personal information from individuals.
"RFID tags recommended for product tracking cannot be used to track
individuals through their lives via some sort of satellite-tracking
mechanism due to limited read ranges," says META Group analyst Jack
Gold, addressing a common urban legend. "The range of these tags is only
a few feet at most, and they do not contain any personally identifiable
information."
In fact, though several different RFID technologies exist, the passive
tags being considered for Wal-Mart's supply chain have a very low data
capacity and short read ranges. The Electronic Product Code (EPC)
standard supported by Wal-Mart limits data initially to 96 bits, little
more than what is found on bar-code labels. Moreover, the often cited
(but elusive) price point of $0.10 for these tags ensures that range and
data capacity will remain low. The tags are not equipped to identify the
buyer, so even if someone did track items, there would be no way to link
those items to the purchaser via RFID.
Furthermore, tracking what individuals are reading or doing via RFID is
the hard - and expensive - approach to gathering personal data. A much
easier way would be to hack credit card databases that do contain
personally identifiable information. Stores already capture who bought
what at the point of sale (POS) when credit cards are used. Yet,
consumers think nothing of using their credit cards to buy all kinds of
things - including memberships to online X-rated sites. Moreover, the
ubiquitous mobile phone is a far more realistic way to track people now,
yet few privacy pundits - many of which carry cell phones - are hyping
the evils of big brother tracking who people call and where they are at
all times.
Furthermore, even retailers that legitimately gather personal buying
information with consumer permission via loyalty cards that provide
product discounts when scanned at the POS terminal still have the
challenge of separating the wheat from the chaff to make effective use
of the large amounts of data they gather. Some, like Publix, have
determined that it is not worth the effort and expense.
"It takes trillions of pieces of data to put together a picture of
buying patterns for a store on an individual-consumer basis," says META
Group analyst Gene Alvarez. "The real value is for the individual stores
to make effective use of it."
The vision of tracking individuals via RFID tags (perhaps through
articles of clothing with embedded tags) also has a practical aspect.
Such tracking would require the creation of a huge network of readers
that would have to be installed, coordinated, and maintained - at the
cost of thousands of dollars per reader. What value would any
organization receive from that information to justify such an expense?
Even a chain with only 500 stores could face significant investment
challenges for tracking products - never mind the consumer movement.
In addition, those debating the security aspects of RFID have to ask a
basic question: Who would possibly care whether a certain person wearing
a certain brand sweater went to a particular bar on a Wednesday night?
Retailers need to deal with similar issues when planning RFID
applications.
"Right now, Wal-Mart suppliers are under a lot of pressure to deliver,
and in those companies we see that the techies are running the show,"
says META Group analyst Bruce Hudson. "By viewing RFID as a technology
project rather than an enterprisewide initiative, companies are putting
their brands at risk. Particularly for item-level tagging, these
projects need to be run by the line of business, with legal, PR, and
marketing input from the beginning. The mistrust surrounding RFID is
similar to that around the 'cookie' at the beginning of e-business. A
lot of fuss about nothing."
RFID systems are costly. A single tag - bought in bulk - may cost only a
quarter, but the readers, the infrastructure to capture the data they
gather, the analytical software to make sense of that data, etc., all
are still costly. For instance, the cost of installing smart shelves for
a single product at all the outlets of a major retailer could cost
millions, and so far is unlikely to be economically justifiable given
the potential weak ROI. Thus, it may be more practical to continue to
monitor most shelves manually.
RFID is not a substitute for good store planning. Many retailers need to
develop better business processes for store planning first.
"While it has a place in warehouse management, RFID technology is too
limited and costly to be used to perform real-time tracking of tens of
thousands of pallets of material in a large warehouse," says META Group
analyst Dwight Klappich. "It does not work, given the read distances,
other environmental considerations such as metal racks, and the
three-dimensional nature of a warehouse. The question remains why a
company would want to pursue RFID for this when there are far more
realistic solutions (i.e., warehouse management systems) that accomplish
the real object of accurate inventory locating at far less cost and
complexity."
"RFID cannot make a bad process good," adds Hudson. "It can only make a
good process better."
RFID also is not an answer to the lack of UPC code standardization. For
instance, if Procter & Gamble uses a different set of codes to identify
its products for North America and Europe, applying RFID will not fix
the problem. Retailers will still have bad data in their databases,
leading to incorrect invoice and stocking errors, which is why retailers
- while pushing RFID - are also pushing UPC code standardization and
data synchronization efforts.
RFID also has its own standards problems. Numerous versions of the
concept using different technologies and pieces of the spectrum are in
production, so a tag that one company uses may not be compatible with
the readers of another company. The EPC standard embraced by Wal-Mart,
for example, is currently incompatible with ISO standards used in
Europe.
USER ACTION: RFID technology has already proven itself to be practical
in applications ranging from automatic toll collection and the Mobil
Speedpass to tracking individual steers on a feed lot. Consumers with
privacy concerns should base those on the reality of RFID capabilities
rather than on groundless statements by professional doomsayers.
Similarly, enterprises considering using RFID should begin by educating
themselves concerning the real capabilities and issues of the technology
and not misapply the technology to problems it cannot cost-effectively
or technically remedy. When considering any plan beyond a purely
technical trial, the planners should clearly identify realistic ROI
early in the planning cycle, considering the variable tag costs as well
as the infrastructure and application development costs.
META Group analysts Dwight Klappich, Bruce Hudson, Gene Alvarez, Tim
McLaughlin, Chris Kozup, John Brand, and Jack Gold contributed to this
article.
Visit META Group's Enterprise Application Resource Center.
http://www.metagroup.com/resourcecenter/ENTAPP
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
BECOME A META GROUP CLIENT
Experience the META Group difference! Click here to learn about META
Group capabilities, services, consulting, events, publications, and
more.
http://www.metagroup.com/info/becomeaclient
