BizTalk Server 2006 R2 - Value for the chemical industry (RFID and CIDX Chem eStandards)

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It's been a lot of fun to watch our BizTalk Server product grow over the years.  I was fortunate to lead the implementation of one of the first BizTalk Server customer implementations back in my consulting days, and have followed the product closely since.  While we have released a bunch of new and upgraded capabilities in this release of the product, I'd like to highlight a couple of very compelling capabilities for chemical companies.

In this release, we include the BizTalk Server Accelerators in the box.  Most interesting to chemical customers is the inclusion of the BizTalk Accelerator for RosettaNet, which supports the CIDX Chem eStandards version 2.0.2.  Having this capability within the product should increase adoption of these standards for chemical customers using BizTalk Server.

In addition to the continued support for the Chem eStandards, we are also launching RFID capabilities inside of BizTalk Server 2006 R2.  Even though RFID adoption in the chemical industry doesn't get the same attention it does in CPG, High Tech or the defense industry, most every customer I talk to has multiple RFID projects and initiatives underway.  These projects are generally smaller in scope (compared to the massive compliance initiatives in the other industries) and are targeted towards solving a specific problem in manufacturing or the supply chain.  Projects such as rail-car management, inventory management and visibility and asset (container) tracking are among the most popular, and can drive a lot of value to the business.

The value of using BizTalk Server 2006 and its RFID capabilities in these scenarios is that you can quickly and easily implement RFID projects in your environment to accelerate the payback in your investment.  With the plug-and-play approach we took with readers and the strong industry support, it is definitely a capability all chemical companies doing RFID projects should evaluate. 

We will talk more about this at LogiChem next week.  Two of our supply chain leads will be in attendance ready to share how some of our early adopters have received value in their deployments of our RFID technology.

Brian Willson

Chemical Team