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IDEMIA and Ideco demonstrate their value stacks

The end of Covid restrictions has seen many companies getting back on the road to meet customers, partners and potential customers face-to-face. The success of Securex earlier this year showed how the market has been missing out on these meet-and-greet events.

Wouter Du Toit (left) and Marius Coetzee (right).

One of the events in July was a morning event hosted by Ideco Biometrics and IDEMIA. The event had a number of goals, one being to show off the MorphoWave SP and XP products from IDEMIA – the mid-range versions of the MorphoWave touchless fingerprint terminals. The others were to talk about the companies and what their current focus areas are.

Wouter Du Toit from IDEMIA kicked off the presentations with an overview of the company and the world in which it operates. IDEMIA is far more than the access control biometric terminals most known in the market, and the company is focussed on creating secure interactions around the world through reliable identity solutions. Even in South Africa, the company is involved in secure cards for banking and other transactions.

The idea is to make all transactions and interactions that require identification smarter and simpler, but secure. This is achieved through enabling people to create identity credentials, whether by card, mobile or biometrics, through to secure and trusted authentication systems, and to the analysis of the data generated.

Du Toit also took some time to focus on the supply chain issues the world is facing at the moment. After such a long delay in the supply of components, every company has had to find ways around the shortages. IDEMIA has addressed this by creating a task team focused on ensuring that supplies will be reliable, and adapting some products to incorporate new components once they have been tested and certified by the company. He says that from September this year the company will be able to forecast availability of products with accuracy, and in 2023 things should return to normal in terms of stock holding – barring any unforeseen crises.

Identity portfolio

Du Toit also briefly went through IDEMIA’s product portfolio, including digital identity products, access control (both fingerprint and facial), integration aspects and MorphoManager, the company’s integrated management platform.

He says that while Covid was a boost for contactless biometric devices, sales are still increasing now that restrictions have been lifted. In addition, sales of contact biometrics are also increasing.

In the contactless space, VisionPass is IDEMIA’s facial recognition solution, while the MorphoWave is the contactless fingerprint biometric solution. The initial MorphoWave products were aimed at the high-end market, but the new MorphoWave SP (Simplified Profile) and XP (Extended Performance) are targeting the mid-market. The SP is available for far less than the initial MorphoWaves, which is making it a popular option these days.

IDEMIA is also promoting its free and paid-for certification programmes, some of which are available online while others are in-house training. The three certifications available at the moment are Biometric Consultant, Biometric Professional and Biometric Administrator.

The Ideco value stack

Martin Meltz from Ideco was up next, talking about the long partnership between IDEMIA and Ideco. He also focused on the value stack offered by Ideco, which is built primarily on IDEMIA’s value stack. Ideco is a master distributor for IDEMIA, but it does much more than distribute products. It is also the certified repair centre for IDEMIA, and it develops its own solutions based on products from IDEMIA and others. Its go-to-market path is via integrators and installers.

In summary, Meltz said Ideco offers a full service to clients, starting before delivery where it assists in solution design, integration and quality assurance. It focuses on best practices, not only in terms of the products it sells and develops, but even the enclosures and mounting of the products, as well as integration with other products and platforms. This includes online and onsite training as well as system reports and backups. (Its solutions include biometrics, but also all other identify and access mechanisms, such as cards.)

The Ideco value stack is designed to offer a range of solutions for clients, designed and built on an IDEMIA backbone, delivering efficiency and productivity. The value stack is based on identity verification and the associated services and solutions. It includes cloud backup, managed services and integration services. The main components mentioned by Meltz include the following:

• Mobile workforce solutions, allowing companies to run time and attendance and identity verification anywhere people are on site.

• It also includes a mustering module which will allow companies to do a roll call in case of an emergency, to quickly determine if people (employees, contractors and visitors) have evacuated the building successfully.

• Visitor management is also available, with software solutions combined with hardware, including Ideco’s own visitor management device.

• Protecting biometric terminals in terms of tamper protection is also available without additional software. Another of its own developments allows multi-door control, so that all doors can be opened in an emergency, and the IDEMIA readers will display a specific colour to lead people to safety.

• An IoT Solution (or GSM gateway) has also been developed which allows remote devices to be managed with ease, allowing a central control room to reach each device, even if the national GSM providers don’t offer permanent IP addresses (the IP addresses are managed seamlessly by the gateway).

• Messaging seems like a standard in today’s world of smartphones and laptops, but companies can also deliver messages to people via biometric terminals as they enter a building, whether it is a bulk message to all staff, or individual messages to people as their identities are verified. Naturally, messages can also be sent to control rooms if doors are left open or devices tampered with.

• Management reporting is also available on all its products through MorphoManager, but Ideco has added to the platform’s built-in reports.

The event was ended when Wouter Du Toit presented Ideco’s CEO, Marius Coetzee, with an award of appreciation from IDEMIA and the partnership between the two companies that has lasted for some 20 years.

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