At a visit to the HP Labs in Palo Alto on Tuesday I met with the guys in the white coats, Salil Pradhan, chief technologist, RFID technology, HP Labs, Cyril Brignone, Research Scientist, HP Labs, and Craig Sayers, Research Scientist, both in the Sentient Environments Department, at the Labs. The scientists demonstrated a very practical IT asset tracking solution for data centers designed around RFID technology.What they did was put an RFID tag on every rack mounted server and used multiple antennas on a single RFID reader, also mounted inside the door of what they call a “smart rack.” The idea is to know where all the servers are at all times. Theft is not the issue here. Rather, the problem HP is trying to solve is the case of “now where did I put that thing?” As you probably know, many from first hand experience, IT folks are constantly taking servers out, servicing them or perhaps switching them into different slots and different racks all the time. Unfortunately, unless meticulous records of where the server was put back are kept, when someone needs to find the right server with some particular application on it or with the right hardware component, it’s gone. Using the software created by HP, IT folks can review the history of what happened to the asset and how long it has been in each location. Each time a server is taken out or put back the reader gets a signal from the tag on the server.The software presents a visual that shows the racks and servers with the current location highlighted. Now, everyone can have an historical record of where the server was and where the server is. Even with bar coding, there never has been an easy way of automating this process before. The HP folks recounted the usual horror tales of managers searching a data center for an entire day until they found the server they were looking for. This asset tracking solution is already being sold by HP services, according to Frank Lanza, the worldwide director of RFID for the services arm. Another neat RFID solution combines GPS and video to both identify an item and its location. For example, it can track objects as they move around in a warehouse. The code name is SeVit for Sentient Video Tracking.Like a time machine, you can search and see back in time to where and when an item passed through a particular location. Because all these boxes look alike, the RFID tag helps determine which box it is. Using GPS and video as cross references, the accuracy rate of knowing what box was where is extremely high. Yes, this system can also track movements of people. But for better or worse, RFID is here to stay. Technology Industry