RFID solutions provider Savi Technology has come out with a string of announcements over the last week which collectively bode well for the 16-year old company that counts former U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security Tom Ridge as one of its board members.

The first announcement was the introduction of Savi's SmartChain Consignment Management Solution (CMS), a supply chain visibility solution targeted at the defense market. CMS offers the visibility of tagged goods not only in the supply chain of a particular military, but also in an ally's supply chain. "Allied defense forces engaged in joint multi-national deployments can leverage each other's RFID networks to provide seamless, real-time visibility of consignments from the factory to the foxhole," says the announcement. The system works with any kind of automatic identification technology, from passive and active RFID to bar codes to sensors. The web-based interface displays geographical maps, graphically pinpointing the location of goods in the supply chain. In addition, it allows centralized management of far-flung RFID readers and a notification system by which administrators are alerted of supply movement aberrations. The Australia Defence Force, from which Savi landed a $10 million contract in August, plans to deploy CMS and have it interoperable with U.S. and U.K. forces by next year.

Another, larger military force also intends to deploy CMS: NATO. According to an announcement today, the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation has awarded Savi an extension to an existing contract which will see not only the installation of CMS, but the deployment of additional readers and tags across an RFID "backbone" network Savi built last year. The new contract follows NATO's evaluation of that network, which stretches from the Netherlands and Germany through Uzbekistan and into Afghanistan. Savi will continue operation of the network.

The third announcement from Savi was the South Korean certification of the use of the 433.92 MHz radio frequency band for the company's active RFID tags and readers. South Korea's Ministry of Information and Communication issued the stamp of approval, which specifically addresses the Savi Tag ST-654 and the Savi Fixed Reader SR-650. Savi considers Korea "strategically important" given the 900,000 TEUs (20-foot long container units) shipped between it and the U.S. every year. (For more insight on RFID activity in Korea, see Korea Displays Focused Interest in RFID, a wrap-up of the recent RFID/USN Korea 2005 Conference held in Seoul.)