Do you need to justify investing in active RFID tags for your data center? Learn how active RFID is a proven technology that improves asset management, and how they impact your process, boosts environmental monitoring efforts and builds your return on investment.
Active RFID tags might cost a bit upfront, but they can transform your data center asset tracking process. Data centers deal with tight budgets—even as they’re tasked with bigger challenges each year. Automation with 99% accurate real-time data lets you do more with less, justifying the upfront investment.
With active RFID, you’ll see long-term improvements that deliver measurable returns. Data centers that upgrade to this solution usually see substantial savings within six months—sometimes sooner. After that, you’re earning money compared to the total cost of passive solutions or the status quo.
You may face questions from executives to articulate the investment justification in an active RFID-based asset management system. While active infrastructure typically costs more than barcodes or other passive RFID technology, active technology platforms can measurably eliminate many hard costs and human errors, and mitigate different types of risks in the data center. Understanding the operational impact (real-time visibility of asset location and asset chain of custody), the financial impact (capital at rest, inventory controls, and audit efficiency), and the overall business impact (audit and regulatory penalties, negative press, doing more with fewer resources) are fundamental to making a strong business case for an active RFID investment.
How Active RFID Improves Asset Management Processes
Upgrading to active RFID tags may seem like buying another flashy new device, but it’s more than that. Active RFID-based asset management helps data centers become best-in-class. We continue to see operational, financial, and business impacts on all enterprise customers who invested in this technology. It’s job-life changing.
Active RFID enables inventory tracking, audits, and reconciliation automation, elevating operations to a higher level.
Spending ranks as one of the main blocks to upgrades, but a business can’t survive long with outdated approaches. The size and complexity of data centers have grown enough to merit automatic asset management; you need an active RFID solution to meet the moment.
The bottom line is this. Many businesses that made the switch to active RFID saw massive savings over their previous passive solutions.
From procurement to decommissioning, you get 100% visibility on every tagged asset anywhere in the facility and the environmental conditions around those critical assets in real-time from anywhere. It’s a strategic shift from manual, and often error-prone and time-consuming processes to error-free automation.
Passive RFID only offers a “point in time” glance at your inventory. The second you’ve finished counting, the information has already started deteriorating. By contrast, active RFID remains up-to-date with its frequent automatic signals.
Passive RFID also forces you to spend precious time and expense counting assets. The passive tags do not scan themselves, so you’ll have to send IT personnel to each device. These costly labor hours add up to thousands of dollars—money you could have spent on new hardware or more productive work. Active RFID eliminates the need for wasted time scanning tags.
Did you know? With RF Code’s active RFID solution, you get the leading active RFID technology, that’s tailor-made for data centers. The tags deliver results on their own—easily viewed in the CenterScape dashboard—making asset management data available on-demand.
Data centers using active RFID tags see better efficiency and uptimes. This more reliable service encourages customers to stay. Thanks to intelligent utilization throughout the asset’s lifecycle, you’ll get more value out of expensive IT hardware.
You can maintain equipment proactively with real-time monitoring, cutting the need for repairs and replacements. The data also gives you precise, objective measures for budgeting. And then, of course, there’s just the simplicity of locating assets at any time.
How Active RFID Impacts Environmental and Power Management
On top of the direct asset management benefits, active RFID tags offer useful environmental and power management results. Even if your team thinks they’re not mainly looking for an environmental and power monitoring solution, these added features deliver value and should contribute to your team’s decision-making. It’s your job to make them aware of the fact that while they think they have an asset tracking problem, they may have an asset management problem.
Environmental Considerations
Data centers typically lack accurate real-time information on energy use and the temperature and humidity of racks.
As such, keeping servers much colder than necessary is common, costing a massive amount of money and making employees uncomfortable. Servers also remain exposed to risks such as hot spots and humidity extremes.
What Sets RF Code Active RFID Apart
RF Code’s active RFID tags monitor your data center’s humidity, air pressure, temperature, and power use, at the rack level—ensuring that your assets run efficiently and without undue risk.
The information goes to the CenterScape software platform, where you can analyze holistic data and be alerted about problematic conditions at a moment’s notice. Environmental sensors tell you readings from each rack, with temperatures precise to within two degrees Fahrenheit—much better than other data center tools on the market.
Companies measure their cooling systems’ performance with metrics built around environmental monitoring data. The insights allow you to catch potentially catastrophic events sooner and have more opportunities to prevent the problems that cause downtime.
Power Monitoring Considerations
Power monitoring from RF Code eliminates costs and security risks from wires and networking accompanying alternative tools, as real-time data and long-term trends reveal where electricity is needed. Investing in active RFID also directly cuts power use costs with wireless monitoring.
Whether you’re guarding against power fluctuations, unplanned downtime, or inventory reporting issues, an investment in active RFID can help you keep asset vulnerability from affecting your IT assets.
How to Make a Business Case for Active RFID
Greater automation efficiency plus environmental and power monitoring will serve as a powerful boost to your ROI projection.
Presenting detailed financial advantages to executives is an important step in justifying the investment in active RFID tags. Such evidence can turn the finance department into a staunch ally.
Did you know? RF Code works with hundreds of enterprise data centers and each sought RF Code’s assistance building a business case for active RFID-based asset management to present to executive leadership. We can do the same with you —get started here.
Massive Gains Thanks to Asset Management Automation
Some real-world examples can help bolster the case. For example, one of the largest financial services companies in the world continues to save six figures annually by automating asset management as a result of our active RFID platform. With two thousand racks and 9,400 assets, audits took hundreds of hours per year. The RF Code solution freed up significant resource time and elevated audit accuracy from 60% to 99%.
Cuts in Manual Audit Spending
Similarly, a global mobile telecommunications company saved $200,000 on its audit process at just one data center location using RF Code’s asset management solution. Lifecycle asset management tracks each change in real-time and synchronizes that data with the telecommunication company’s DCIM ensuring that the DCIM data matches the reality on the floor and inventory. The company eliminated the need for a third party to help prepare for quarterly audits.
Skeptical? Let’s Have a Bake-off
Active RFID tags are more than a helpful technology; they’re a foundational asset management component. Autonomous physical asset intelligence liberates your data center from time-consuming and expensive tasks and keeps your DCIM data accurate to match the reality on the data center floor.
The real-time, 100% accurate information—along with power and environmental monitoring—ensures that your facility functions smoothly. RF Code’s active RFID technology dramatically boosts IT asset tracking accuracy for full lifecycle management. You can use it to improve inventory utilization at data centers and edge locations.
Automation helps slash manual errors, reduce over-procurement, optimize processes, maintain uptime, and comply with regulatory requirements. With patented wire-free active RFID sensors, open APIs, and real-time reporting capabilities, RF Code easily integrates with existing IT, facilities, and business systems.
Want to justify an active RFID investment? Let's schedule a time and build an ROI business case together based on your data center's desired outcomes. Another option is conducting a mini bake-off. Some customers wanted to test our active RFID against other RFID technologies in their lab or data center. We welcome that. Let's schedule a time to discuss what that would involve.
