Three Questions With NFC Forum Partner AIM’s COO Mary Lou Bosco

We had the chance to interview AIM’s COO Mary Lou Bosco about the recent liaison announcement between the two organizations. Here’s what she had to say about the liaison and the industry.

1. Can you provide an overview of AIM?  What are its goals and achievements?

AIM is the trusted worldwide industry association for the automatic identification industry. For nearly half a century, AIM has provided unbiased information, educational resources and standards to providers and users of these technologies.

Our mission is to help AIM members grow their businesses by fostering the effective use of Automatic Identification and Data Capture (AIDC) solutions.  AIDC refers to the method of automatically identifying objects, collecting data about them, and entering them directly into computer systems, without human involvement. AIM is a global organization with more than 400 members including manufacturers, distributors, resellers, educators, system integrators and technology users of barcode, RFID, the Internet of Things, RAIN, RTLS and NFC services and solutions.  Just this year we announced a liaison agreement with the NFC Forum.

2. Why did AIM form a liaison with the NFC Forum and what do you hope to achieve through the liaison?

The liaison was the outgrowth of a joint event AIM and the NFC Forum organized last year.  In 2018, AIM partnered with the NFC Forum and RAIN RFID Alliance to host the Connections Summit. The event, held at Google Java Corners in Sunnyvale, California, was attended by over 500 industry professionals representing 23 countries. This success led us to exploring further collaboration with the NFC Forum which, eventually, resulted in a liaison agreement between the two organizations.

The liaison agreement focuses on the IoT market and the challenge of connecting, commissioning and controlling the predicted 36 billion IoT devices in use by 2020.  IoT is an important market for AIM members and one that AIM is targeting for future innovations and the development of emerging technologies.

Each organization has unique perspectives and industry expertise that will be valuable to this relationship.  We want to use the two organizations’ joint knowledge base to build a variety of use cases showing the interoperability of the technologies in IoT and industrial solutions.  Creating an ecosystem to support innovative applications is a long-term goal of the liaison. This is why we wanted to partner with the NFC Forum.

We kicked off the relationship with a press release last year and are formulating initial plans that may include a joint white paper and presentations, as well as presentations at each other’s member meetings.

3. Looking ahead, what are AIM’s future plans and how could this liaison with the NFC Forum help achieve these goals?

I find liaisons energizing.  They spark creativity and bring together technologies and solutions into completely new applications.  Partnering with ubiquitous, complementary technologies like NFC expands AIM’s market footprint and opens new avenues for innovation.  In the near future, we plan to focus on education and awareness activities between the two organizations.  I’m excited by the opportunity to work together with the NFC Forum, share knowledge and foster the growth of the two technologies.

See all the NFC Forum’s liaison partners here