Bank taps RFID in data center

SINGAPORE--A financial institution in the island-state has embraced RFID (radio frequency identification) in its data center to track its assets and improve security, according to Hewlett-Packard.

Speaking to reporters at a media briefing on data centers held here today, Rajesh Prabhakaran, director of storage services at HP Asia-Pacific and Japan, revealed that the RFID project is the first of its kind in the Asia-Pacific region--and possibly worldwide.

The "global bank", which Prabhakaran declined to name, is using RFID technology to manage its assets in its data center, including servers and storage media.

"We created RFID portals at the data center, and all the assets in the data center were tagged with RFID tags," he said, adding that "any asset which enters or exits the data center" gets automatically updated in the HP OpenView AssetCenter.

The HP OpenView AssetCenter is a software tool that enables IT organizations to manage the physical, financial and contractual aspects of all IT assets, from request and procurement to retirement and disposal.

Prabhakaran said the RFID technology helps improve security and deter theft. For instance, it could help highlight a security breach when someone walks out of the data center with storage media containing confidential information.

The technology was trialed in a six-month pilot, but is now "fully operational", he added. The bank plans to implement the technology in all its data centers worldwide.

According to Prabhakaran, the cost of such an implementation does not depend on the size of the data center, but rather the amount of assets in the data center and the "complexity of the automation in the integration".