Leader: For RFID read KISS

The possibilities surrounding radio frequency identification (RFID) chips - now that they are cheap enough to be placed in just about any product - are almost limitless. silicon.com columnist Peter Cochrane spelled out some of the options a few months back.

However, as with any cool technology, for most of the world to benefit from it there needs to be a business model and approaches that work. So it is that after a honeymoon period of over a year - albeit with complaints from some civil liberties groups, a discussion for another time - we are now being brought down to earth.

Such a fall isn't such a bad thing when we're talking about the nitty-gritty of real world trials at organisations such as Gillette, Marks & Spencer, Tesco and Wal-Mart. But it is more worrying when we hear companies aren't always getting into RFID in a sensible way.

A week ago analysts at Meta Group warned many users need to understand there will be a learning curve with the technology. RFIDing a whole supply chain just won't happen overnight, for example, and nor should it.

Today we heard from other experts also explaining RFID will ultimately be about IT systems. It is little use being able to identify everything on a supermarket shelf if there are five different ways of describing a product in five different databases, for example.

Yet again, it seems, a clever technology is beholden to basic common sense in information systems. That's no bad thing. Organisations that do the simple things well, goes the message, will be in a position to profit most from RFID - or the next great technological developments.