COVER STORY 20 Oracle’s Crusade As part ofits effort to win over Penna en ene ay eee Ty Benner eae Descente cre ‘ware, available in 2007. Oracle Ceo ane cst Sta crcs aac) ioe ees Bronce enn Rae ee 12 News Scan Wal-Mart reports on RFID results; retallers to spend lesson IT this year; brand loy- ally online; check-processina overhaul well under way; MCI buying managed securiy-servies company; IBM seeks to ease PC trarsition; RFID vendors work together; HP to open RFID lab; Homeland Security courts academia; employees dont trust monitoring 18 Techonomics symartecs franca indieate i's on the right path asit moves into hardware; | tans 2008 sates sre jst 4% | wen gains astriutabe to | the weak US. daliar are excluded 24 HP Touts Integrity Howlett Packard introduces Haniunrbased | Imearty server platforms with expanded operat- For company index, see p. 53 ing-systems options and virtualization capabilities 24 Intel’s Virtual Gambit The company releases prelirminary specs that guide software developers designing virtualization features for 1A-32 and Itanium-based processors 26 Digital Drug Orders The Controlled Substance Ordering System wil end the time-consuming and expensive process of ordering controlled substances, replacing paper forms with secure electronic transactions featuring digital certificates 30 RFID Ambitions ‘Top European retailers Marks & Spencer, Metro, ‘and Tesco advance their RFID initiatives with more-mature trials and futuristic applications | = | Piece ISSUE 1,023 | SOURCES 8 Editor's Note/Letters | Editorial Contacts 3 Sales Contacts 3 Advertiser And Editorial Indexes 32 Sensors | Everywhere Wireless sensor-networks, composed of devices known as motes, which can detect changes in thelr environment. and feed data down the line toa central computer are atthe frontier of computer networking research ‘and could figure prominently in the | plans of multinational companies and large IT vendors 39 4 More Years Of IT | ‘While security remains a top priority for the federal government, it's the rowing budget deficit that wil shape E-government efforts uring President Bush’s second term. son. 24,2005 3A ‘bucket brigade’ of tiny, wirelessly networked sensors someday may be able to track anything, anytime, anywhere SOME BIG COMPANIES ARE trying to make the world—and almost everything in it— smarter. Science Applications Inter- national Corp., the big govern- ment IT contractor known as SAIC, is developing technology for the Defense and Homeland Security de- partments that could use hundreds of tiny, wireless sensors packed with computing power to help secure U.S. | borders, bridges, power plants, and ships by detecting suspicious move- ments or dangerous cargo and radio- ing warnings back to a command cen- ter. BP ple, the world's second-largest independent oil company, aims to knock down the cost of monitoring equipment at a Washington state oil refinery, from thousands of dollars per measurement to hundreds, by replac- ing big, dumb, wired sensors with wireless ones in a network. ‘And Hewlett-Packard is experiment- Ing with wireless networked sensors at ‘a warehouse in Memphis, Tenn., trying to reinvent how companies manage ‘the flow of goods. A prototype wireless network of small video-camera sensors hooked to image-recognition software ‘works in concert with radio-frequency identification technology to make sure inventory is put in the right place. The cameras track goods as they move through the warehouse, and those im- ages get matched with RFID tag num- bers that describe them. Wireless sensor-network technology is at the frontier of computer network- ing research and could be tech’s next ‘multibillion-dollar market. Today largely BY AARON RICADELA SENSORS VERYWHER Illustration by Eboy For company Index, see p. 53 Jon 24,2008 33