Imagine a world in which:

"...billions of radio-frequency identification chips will be attached to shipping pallets, boxes, and even individual items, each generating a silent "here I am" signal at least three times per second. Those signals will be picked up by 300 million RFID readers located in warehouses, distribution centers, and other facilities worldwide. ***

Are we ready for this? And what are we going to do with all of the data RFID chips generate?"

That's the question posed in a recent article in Information Week.

It is beginning to dawn on some IT managers how unready they are to deal with the avalanche of data from those systems.

In fact, one analyst in the story predicts that many of the early RFID systems implemented by Wal-Mart suppliers will be trashed within a year. Their architectures will just be too limited to handle future RFID needs.

One of the biggest issues to be faced: what data do you keep and what do you ignore? Another issue: who gets to see what data and how do you stratify it so that only the authorized persons have access to the data?

Middleware will play an important role to direct data to the correct places and uses.