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8 Reasons why RFID makes sense for the data center

Feb 23, 2013 |
1 min Read
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Knowing where all the assets are is a key initiative for nearly all data center teams and IT groups. Without that information it is difficult to find servers when they need to be repaired, identify depreciation, or lifecycle concerns. RFID is a mature technology proven to improve inventory gathering and management, tracking of assets as they move through your organization and even helping to organize a migration from one facility to another.

Time: Current manual inventory takes approximately 1 hour per rack when you include validation of data in asset inventory. Leveraging RFID this is reduced to less than 1 minute per rack.

Morale: High talent resources are used to gather or validate asset inventory often taking weeks of time to do so. With the time saved leveraging RFID about 90% of your resources time would be recovered to do other work.

Convenience: Asset tags and barcodes often are placed in locations that are difficult to get an accurate read of the barcode. Often these labels are obstructed by cables, rack components and they are difficult to read. With RFID you get 100% read of all equipment.

Granularity: Tracking components internal to equipment such as blades or storage is easily tracked using RFID technology.

Find it fast: Tracking equipment within a facility (or across multiple facilities) is possible with RFID. Equipment can be tracked as it enters a facility and followed anywhere in the facility.

Accuracy: RFID is a mature technology that is prven successful in many applicaitons.

ROI: Get a return on your investment in as little as a year. This might be one fo the most cost effective projects you complete all year!

Usability: DCIM tools that leverage RFID are more effective using updated information.

Sean Cotter is President of Asset Vue, bringing 27 years of experience in IT leadership, business development, and entrepreneurship. He leads the company’s strategic direction and team, helping organizations simplify inventory management through RFID and barcode technology, automated data capture, and asset lifecycle tracking.

Sean’s expertise spans RFID and automatic identification technologies, process optimization, data center infrastructure management, and environmental monitoring. Before Asset Vue, he founded and grew an outsourced IT business and later served as Director of IT and CIO at the DVL Group. He has also taught Operations Management as an Adjunct Professor at West Chester University and holds a master’s degree in business from Saint Joseph’s University’s Haub School of Business.

His writing draws on this operational and technology experience to explore practical approaches to asset visibility, inventory accuracy, and more efficient IT asset management.

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