In Hindi, the word Reva means "new beginning." And that's exactly what Reva Systems Corp. is all about. The Chelmsford, MA-based start-up is transcending proprietary tradition with a novel, standards-driven approach to deploying and managing RFID infrastructure. The goal: Help manufacturers and their partners extract ROI from new business processes enabled by still-maturing RFID technology as it scales across their extended value chains.
Founded 29 months ago by a coterie of networking industry veterans with the backing of two top-shelf venture capital firms, Reva offers RFID network infrastructure plumbing that allows companies to remotely manage RFID devices by making them extensions of the corporate TCP/IP network. This approach improves system performance and security while saving organizations time and money on deployments and operation by centralizing management of RFID infrastructure. It's a vision not unlike Sun Microsystem's "Network Is the Computer" or EMC's view of the centricity of storage peripherals. Only in Reva's case, RFID readers and network infrastructure are at the center of the managed environment.
Built on industry standards such as the EPCglobal Gen2 air interface protocol, reader-to-network protocols, and RFID data access standards, Reva's Tag Acquisition Network (TAN) provides scalable network intelligence to help companies quickly deploy and tune RFID readers to site-specific requirements and overcome RF interference challenges. Central to the architecture is a network appliance called the Tag Acquisition Processor (TAP), which implements the TAN by creating above the reader level a logical layer that acts as an extension to enterprise TCP/IP networks. This also allows RFID data to be accessed by enterprise applications that support standard and application-specific interfaces such as ALE, JMS, SQL, and SAP's AII.
Already, the company is working with major CPG and high-tech manufacturers, including Hewlett-Packard Co., which is deploying TAN across its global supply chain to meet requests for tagged goods from retailers and other customers. HP is also using Reva's technology within its own manufacturing operations to streamline assembly, QA, and order processing.
Many analysts took notice of Reva early on. "I like their approach a lot -- they have their heads on straight," notes John Fontanella, an independent industry analyst, echoing comments made by other analysts since Reva's inception. "End-users told us they do not want to employ skilled RFID people at every site," he adds, noting that many voiced a preference to manage RFID deployments remotely using personnel trained to administer existing TCP/IP infrastructure.
The drive for centralized RFID management, says Ashley Stephenson, Reva's co-founder and chairman, is an outgrowth of the elusive search among manufacturers for return on RFID investment. While interest in RFID spiked in 2003 in advance of retail industry and DoD mandates, business slackened for many vendors during the following two years as organizations beyond Wal-Mart's 100 largest suppliers sought reassurance that spending on RFID hardware, software, and services would boost operational efficiencies and drive savings. The market dynamic changed again last fall with the introduction of lower-cost and more reliable Gen 2 readers and tags, Stephenson says.
"We've seen more progress in the last three months than in the last year," he notes, pointing to a "sea change" in spending that was forecast for 2004 and 2005 but failed to materialize. "RFID has passed through the trough of disillusion," he says. "People feel this could be it."
Now Reva plans to take advantage of what the company sees as an upturn in RFID investment. Having recently closed a $13.5 million round of Series B financing, led by original investors Charles River Ventures and North Bridge Venture Partners, Reva is poised to build out global sales and marketing to catalyze growth. The start-up has also added management depth by hiring former Arbor Networks president Tom Schuster as CEO. Schuster, a battle-tested industry veteran, will share day-to-day operational responsibilities with Stephenson. With cash and a well-developed sales pipeline in hand, Reva now appears positioned to make good on its name -- and its technology vision.
"The battle they have is less about the technology and more about changing the way people think about data management," Fontanella suggests, noting that affecting culture and business processes is notoriously more difficult than influencing technology adoption. "I like their chances."