SEEBURGER: Not Just Another RFID Middleware Company

SEEBURGER engages the North American RFID market by partnering with AccuCode and ScanSource.

When German-based business integration software provider SEEBURGER exhibited its RFID middleware at EPCglobal last October, I chalked it up as just another entrant in an overcrowded competition. In January, SEEBURGER got my attention by announcing a partnership with North American systems integrator AccuCode.

At RFID World, SEEBURGER announced another partnership with ScanSource. By partnering with large integrators like AccuCode, and also engaging ScanSource's army of small and medium integrators, SEEBURGER hopes to address the anticipated demand for RFID from small and medium businesses. According to SEEBURGER's VP of North American RFID Sales, Phil Calderbank "In addition to Wal-Mart's second- and third-tier suppliers, there is an enormous opportunity among the 3,000 DoD suppliers that are just waiting for the RFID language to appear in their new contracts before taking the plunge."

SEEBURGER is known (particularly in Europe) for its expertise at enterprise application integration (EAI) and business-to-business (B2B) integration – things I typically associate with larger companies. I wondered how it intended to address the RFID needs of small and medium companies. Calderbank acknowledged that SEEBURGER's RFID Workbench product is basically an extension of its B2B and EAI business integration solutions. "Our business integration solutions are installed at 6,000 locations around the world," explained Calderbank. "We initially developed RFID Workbench for our existing customers. However, to address the needs of small and medium businesses, as well as the VARs that support them, we made the offering modular and scalable."

SEEBURGER offers three levels of its RFID Workbench product. Workbench Light supports process modelling and simulation, thereby enabling a systems integrator to engage its client at a business process level. Workbench Standard accommodates the needs of small companies by supporting a stand-alone RFID solution (e.g. a slap-and-ship operation). Workbench Pro supports full-scale, multilocation implementations and includes SEEBURGER's application integration adaptors for ERP and WMS systems, EDI transactions, and for building other external (B2B) and internal (EAI) integrations. ScanSource's small AIDC VARs will be able to build RFID solutions using Workbench Light and Standard. Larger integrators, like AccuCode, will use Workbench Pro to build more sophisticated solutions for larger companies.

The RFID middleware space is confusing. The choices include pure-play RFID middleware vendors (OAT Systems, Connecterra, and Globe Ranger), ERP vendors (most notably SAP and Microsoft Business Solutions), platform vendors (Sun and HP), and B2B/EAI business integration vendors (including SEEBURGER and IBM).

Jeff Wells, president of RFID systems integrator Franwell sees it like this, "The systems integrator has to engage the client at the business process level, the RFID middleware solution has to be scalable, and it has to be able to interface with disparate legacy systems." On paper, it appears that SEEBURGER's RFID Workbench satisfies those three conditions.