Peter O’Neill, President, findBIOMETRICS (fB): What’s new at Aware so far in 2014?
David Benini, VP Marketing, Aware, Inc. (Aware): Aware has introduced our Nexa family of SDKs for biometric search and match, which includes fingerprint, face, and iris matching algorithms in SDKs called Nexa|Fingerprint, Nexa|Face, and Nexa|Iris, respectively.
fB: Congratulations, that’s great news! So why is Aware introducing matchers? Why now?
Aware: The Nexa algorithms have been in the works in our R&D group for many years, having evolved from our other fingerprint, face, and iris SDK products. The time was right to give them APIs and make them openly available. We’re offering the Nexa SDKs because matching is clearly such a critical component of biometric systems, and until now we could not sufficiently fulfill the need when customers required it. So the main reason for introducing the Nexa SDKs is to round out our product line in a way that makes us better equipped to address our customers’ needs.
fB: What’s special about the Nexa matchers? What differentiates them from other biometric search solutions on the market?
Aware: The Nexa SDKs are designed to apply recent advances in high-performance computing to biometric matching; we believe they represent a modern biometric matching software design that is reflected not only in their speed and accuracy but also in their reliability, scalability, and ease-of-use. I expect different customers will find different things attractive about the Nexa matchers. Some will use them primarily for their performance. Others will appreciate that they are part of a broad product portfolio, with granular functionality available a la carte; customers can buy a single SDK, use one or more products together with hardware and software from other vendors, or build a large-scale solution upon the full range of our products and services. Our customers really appreciate that flexibility. Our collaborative approach to technical support is also something that customers value; strong support is a differentiator, particularly when deploying advanced biometric search technology.
fB: Does this somehow change Aware’s role in the industry?
Aware: I think our role doesn’t change but rather becomes reinforced. We see the Nexa SDKs as a natural extension of our current product line, which includes a broad array of biometric enrollment SDKs and components, workstation applications, and a biometric services platform. Our aim has always been to provide the market with products that are “true COTS,” in that they’re designed and supported for reliability, maintainability, and ease-of-use by our customers. Our focus continues to be to supply solution providers with biometrics software in a form factor that enables them to best leverage their own strengths and resources, with the flexibility to deliver a solution in their own vision.
fB: What else can we expect from Aware this year?
Aware: Our renewed focus as a company on biometrics software is enabling us to improve our research and product development efforts, and so we plan to continue to introduce new software products. But the tenets of our approach to the market will remain the same: granular a la carte functionality, open architectures, hardware independence, standards compliance, “true COTS” reliability and maintainability, ease-of-use, and technical support.
fB: That’s great to hear, we’ll keep an eye on Aware for those new products. Thanks for talking with me today, Dave.
Aware: Thank you, Peter, I appreciate the opportunity.
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