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[Simon]

The talent pool of individuals skilled in radio frequency identification (RFID) is shallow and could impact the successful adoption of the technology, according to the results of a new survey released today by the Computing Technology Industry Association (CompTIA).

Eighty percent of companies participating in the survey said they do not believe there are sufficient numbers of professionals skilled in RFID to hire from today. Two-thirds of organizations (66.7 percent) said training and educating their employees in the technology is one of the biggest challenges they will face in order to succeed in the RFID market.

'We believe the market needs hundreds of systems integration companies with RFID capabilities; and hundreds of thousands of individuals knowledgeable in this technology to meet current and future demand,' said David Sommer, vice president, electronic commerce, CompTIA.

Sommer presented the findings of the CompTIA survey in a presentation today at the RFID World 2005 conference in Dallas.

CompTIA is working with a cross section of major players in the RFID market to address the skills shortage. Product manufacturers, distributors, system integrators, education and training providers, and end-user customers are active in an effort to craft a vendor-neutral professional certification of RFID skills for individuals working with the technology.

The survey of CompTIA members found that customer adoption of RFID solutions is relatively modest. A significant number of companies - 71.4 percent - said their customers have not implemented RFID solutions. For those organizations with customers that implemented RFID solutions, responding companies said that fewer than 20 percent of their customers have done so.

Similarly, 80 percent of the responding companies said either they have yet to go past the investigation stage of RFID implementation; or have done no investigation at all. Just 16 percent have implemented one or more RFID pilot projects for themselves or their customers.

Survey respondents said their customers come from a variety of industries, including services, government, manufacturing, retail, health care, communications, and financial services and real estate.

When asked if they see their company offering RFID products and services in the next three years, 37.3 percent of organizations said they definitely will; and 39.2 percent said they would consider it if there is interest from their customers. Companies expect to offer hardware installation and maintenance services (82.1 percent), software implementations (61.5 percent) and other services (51.3).

The majority of respondents to the CompTIA survey were value-added resellers and solutions providers (33.3 percent); consultants and systems integrators (21.6 percent); and manufactures (19.6 percent). Two-thirds of the companies have annual revenues of up to $25 million; while 22 percent are companies with annual revenues of $100 million or more.

About CompTIA
CompTIA is a global trade association representing the business interests of the information technology industry. For more than 23 years CompTIA has provided research, networking and partnering opportunities to its 20,000 members in 102 countries. The association is involved in developing standards and best practices, and influencing the political, economic and educational arenas that impact IT worldwide. More information is at www.comptia.org.

[Charles Chew]

The talent pool of individuals skilled in radio frequency identification (RFID) is shallow

Simon,
I am so surprised with the results of this survey but it does give us a lead to the strength and the overall response to RFID tech.

So does this all mean that RFID is not quite there for global embracement yet and bar coding remains much in the forefront This must be a huge blow to promoters of RFID. If time is needed for RFID to be further accepted, the problem is I am not surprised if a new generation of traceability system using nano technology may just emerge.

Any day, any invention

Charles Chew