With the design and deployment work for the U.S. Department of Defense's extensive RFID network completed in late September, industry experts expect a ripple effect across the supply chain industry, with more companies moving to add RFID dollars to their budgets.

RFID vendors aren't wasting any time coming out with new products to meet the anticipated needs of companies in various phases of RFID deployment.

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BEA Systems and OATSystems on Oct. 12 announced new products—BEA the second revision of its WebLogic RFID Enterprise Server, and OATSystems its namesake (and new) tag@source system.

On the hardware front, Alien Technology made four announcements this week that, taken together, represent its biggest splash since the company came out of a quiet period, imposed by a postponed IPO earlier this year.

Alien launched on Oct. 9 its high-volume RFID inlay manufacturing facility in Fargo, N.D. Along with the ribbon cutting, the company announced the release of its Gen2 chip product, the expansion of its Gen2 inlay portfolio, and an agreement with six label converters for the purchase of up to 840 million RFID tags.

Under the terms of its agreements with the label resellers, Alien is the primary supplier of Gen2 UHF (ultra high frequency) tags that the partners buy and then covert into RFID labels for a wide range of supply chain, asset tracking and item-level applications.

"Alien has made a strong commitment to these top label suppliers to collaborate on provisioning the rapidly growing market for RFID technology," said Keith McDonald, a senior vice president at Alien, in Morgan Hill, Calif.

OATSystems as well is focusing on the label market with its latest announcement.

The company, which generally offers RFID middleware that helps to connect RFID and enterprise systems together, is now looking to the other end of the spectrum.

Read the full story on eWEEK.com: RFID Vendors Raise the Stakes with New Products.