One of the biggest news items of 2014 broke in April with the acquisition of DigitalPersona by Cross Match Technologies, creating the largest independent identity management company in the world focused on biometrics. Today, to reflect this major change, the company has released its new branding. All that was once Cross Match Technologies and DigitalPersona is now flying under the flag of Crossmatch, with the telling tagline, “The world identifies with us!“
FindBiometrics president Peter O’Neill had a chance to get the whole scoop on this new brand identity in an interview with Richard Agostinelli, CEO of Crossmatch. The conversation touches on the ideas behind the new identity, some new products from Crossmatch and what 2015 holds for the company.
Peter O’Neill, President, FindBiometrics (FB): Today Cross Match launched a new name and brand image to the market, what does the new Crossmatch mean to your customers and to the industry?
Richard Agostinelli, CEO, Crossmatch: Peter, as we discussed when we announced the merger with DigitalPersona, Crossmatch is now the largest independent company in the world that is focused on identity solutions using biometrics. We believe we have a deep understanding of identity management challenges in our core markets and the expertise to solve them. We can now offer solutions at every phase of the ID management cycle from multifactor enrollment through authentication including a robust work flow management platform that we use to manage, analyze and integrate data into legacy systems. In addition to our market leading hardware and software, we have talented solution engineers who can help our customers solve their ID management problems. So all of this leads us to believe our new tagline, “The world identifies with us!” is absolutely appropriate and that our customers can rely on us to solve all of their ID management challenges.
FB: So your existing customer base has been pleased with the combination of the two offerings?
Crossmatch: The integration has gone quite well. Yes, it has been transparent from a transition standpoint for our customers and we have now assembled a talented new leadership team for the company, consolidated our back office systems and are in the process of cross training our sales and operations teams. We have also made great strides in integrating our software offerings and are now unveiling our new brand and website.
FB: Please tell us more about the new branding.
Crossmatch: We are using Crossmatch as the corporate name and have incorporated the Digital-Persona logo into that cleaner look Crossmatch name and then on the software side we are using the Digital-Persona name for our software offerings. We think this is appropriate because the purpose of all of our software is to create a secure personal digital identity and a means to manage that digital identity. On the hardware side, we are retaining the recognizable brand names that we have used in the past.
FB: Can you tell us little bit about your new Verifier Sentry product?
Crossmatch: Sure, it is geared primarily to border control and law enforcement applications. It is an Android-based handheld which incorporates a FAP 30 TFT fingerprint sensor, contact and contactless card readers, and also captures facial images. We also offer a robust SDK for our integrator partners, and developed a device management application called Commander. The Commander application provides remote management of the Verifier Sentry devices, from software management and transaction logging to remote device wiping in the event of loss.
FB: What can we expect to see from the new Crossmatch in 2015?
Crossmatch: We will continue to focus on innovative hardware like the Verifier Sentry, but also emphasize enhanced software offerings that are targeted at solving the specific and critical ID management challenges in our core markets. For example, in financial services fighting cybercrime is going to be key; and in law enforcement and defense we are working to improve efficiency, reduce costs and ensure standards compliance both through our hardware and software offerings; in government programs we want to help ensure secure benefits distribution, and support border control initiatives; in retail point of sale we are targeting fraud reduction; and for enterprises, of course it is for securing logical and physical access in a world today where nearly 1 in 3 employees is mobile.
So we are going to be very focused on mobility, developing solutions that can enroll and authenticate people on a variety of devices in a variety of environments regardless of network connectivity issues. We are going to be quite busy also working on our internal processes to ensure we remain nimble and easy to do business with.
FB: I know when we spoke last that you were mentioning that being nimble these days for a company in our industry is critical and it seems that those companies that can move quickly and adjust to market demands are really going to do well. With the combined company are you still feeling that you are able to approach the market in a very nimble fashion?
Crossmatch: Absolutely! As I started to mention, we are working on overhauling and streamlining all of our internal processes to ensure that we can react quickly. A lot of that just has to do also with the entrepreneurial spirit and drive that we have within the company and approaching customer’s challenges by using our experience to try to help them craft solutions that are innovative, cost effective and practical. And so we believe that Crossmatch has the global reach and the internal talent and mindset to remain nimble and react quickly to changing market requirements.
FB: As you know we follow the industry carefully and the vertical markets that we think are sort of hot and as you were describing the areas of where you now can provide expertise you really do cover the core ones that seem to be gaining a lot of traction and momentum and again mobility being one of the driving factors of that. It is nice to see that the new Crossmatch is so well positioned to cover these areas.
Crossmatch: Thank you Peter. As we mentioned when we did the acquisition of DigitalPersona, it opened up the commercial market for us and specifically the enterprise, retail point of sale, and financial services verticals. As you said those are the areas that are really starting to understand the value proposition of biometrics and embrace those solutions. So we are very excited about what lies ahead.
FB: Thank you very much Rich for providing this update for us and I really look forward to seeing the new brand out there in the market.
Crossmatch: Thanks again for your time Peter; it’s always good to talk with you.
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