Xterprise Brings RFID Innovation To Financial Services Announces Expanded Collaboration With Key Financial Services IT Consortia
In a move designed to support the refinement and utilization of RFID-based technology standards for the financial services industry, Xterprise today announced an expanding collaborative relationship with the Financial Services Technology Consortium (FSTC).
The FSTC was created in 1993 to harness emerging technologies to address the challenges of the financial services sector. Xterprise has in the past worked with the FSTC on the use of standardized RFID tags to protect data center resources, laptop computers, data tapes and other IT assets used by banks, investment firms and other financial services organizations. Today's announcement marks an extension of that cooperative effort.
"Standards based RFID technology now allows financial services firms to manage IT assets in data centers," says Dean Frew, President and CEO of Xterprise. "We have seen significant opportunity for value creation in the sector with solutions for item level asset management in data centers, and expect that to increase as we expand our offerings in additional application areas such as management of cash bags and documents and records."
Xterprise has a proven record of innovation in the use of RFID for IT asset management. The Xterprise Clarity IT Asset Management™ (ITAM) solution gives financial services firms a powerful RFID-based solution to accurately track data center IT assets, laptops, data tapes and other mobile assets. RFID tags carry more information than traditional barcode labels, and can be read quickly and accurately over large areas and in difficult to reach spaces. Built on the Clarity Application Framework™ leveraging Microsoft platform technology including BizTalk Server and SQL Server, the solution offers a high degree of value at a low price point, giving financial services organizations a solution to count and manage IT assets more precisely, more quickly and at a much lower cost.
Depending on the nature of a specific deployment, the Clarity ITAM™ solution can deliver:
- Greater than 98% accuracy in inventory discovery and cycle counting in a financial services data center environment
- Over 95% reduction in cycle count labor costs
- Increased data center asset utilization by 10-20%, and 1-5% discovery of un-used data center assets
- Up to 100% process assurance for hard drive eradication, IT asset receiving and other IT asset processes
- 10-15% reduction in Sarbanes Oxley compliance costs
- A nearly 100% reduction in loss and theft by tracking the chain of custody of hard drives, laptops and other portable assets
"RFID technology holds the promise of improving the efficiency, accuracy and security of asset management, and the FSTC has worked to provide guidance to our members who are seeking a standardized RFID tagging solution," says John Fricke, 1st Vice President of FSTC and the project manager for the Consortia's RFID IT data center asset tracking research efforts. "As a key RFID technology vendor to several active FSTC members, Xterprise has played an important and innovative role in this collaborative effort."
Xterprise and Microsoft have multiple customers who were among the founding members of the FSTC IT asset tagging standards work project and played leading roles in the push to refine and implement RFID tag standards for IT assets in the financial services industry. Today, they are among a number of leading U.S. financial institutions that have deployed Clarity ITAM™ for data center asset management, laptop security and tape tracking.
"No industry has been more affected by the economic downturn than the financial industry," said Rich Feldmann, U.S. banking industry solutions director at Microsoft. "Financial institutions are under pressure to reduce costs and show immediate improvement, and their leadership is increasingly turning to IT to find innovative ways to achieve these goals."
About The Financial Services Technology Consortium
The Financial Services Technology Consortium (FSTC) was established in 1993 at the dawn of the commercialization of the Internet with a mission to harness evolving technology advances and innovative thinking to help solve the business challenges of the financial services industry. Members are North America's largest financial institutions, other financially oriented corporations, technology providers, government officials, and academia.
About Xterprise
For over six years, Xterprise Incorporated has been a leader in the development of enterprise-class RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) software applications. These highly scalable applications combine our Clarity™ application framework technology, Microsoft platform technology, continuous improvement and lean supply chain expertise, enterprise systems integration along with RFID and other sensory technology to deliver previously unachievable levels of visibility, accuracy, process compliance and value to our clients. Recognized by Microsoft as their 2008 RFID Partner of the Year, Xterprise delivers fast return on investment, high value and low total cost of ownership solutions across a wide variety of industries. For additional information call us at +1-972-690-946, email us at info@xterprise.com or visit us online at www.Xterprise.com.
SOURCE: Xterprise Incorporated