If you are looking for wisdom in the realm of ID technologies, Ayman S. Ashour, Chairman & CEO of Identive, is the right man who can answer all your questions, and doubts. Here he joins us for an exclusive interview that raises all perspectives regarding ID… and of course… NFC!

Cover Personality: Ayman S. Ashour

Designation: Chairman & CEO

Company: Identive

The SMART Sense: As the first Cover Personality for 2012 on The SMART Sense, what are your New Year resolutions and what does Identive, in its entirety, intend to achieve this year?

Ayman: 2011 was an important year for Identive, a year of building our technology platform and towards the end of the year of consolidating our various product trade names under one primary customer-facing brand, Identive. We also made significant investments in 2011 to position ourselves as pioneers in important growth markets. The acquisition of idOnDemand launched us into the market for Identity as a Service, or SaaS-based identity management, and we established Identive as a broad-based provider of NFC solutions with the launch of our Mobility and NFC Solutions group and the launch of many new NFC tags, readers, SDKs and other products. We look at 2012 as the year where we would see growing traction for our SaaS offerings and expand our NFC presence into the services area.

Identive - idOnDemand SmartID Card shown with consumer handsets

The SMART Sense: With 25 years of solid experience in the Security and Identification industry, how different is the ID market now, as compared to when you first started?

Ayman: I guess we would have to start out by looking at how the world has changed from one where virtually all transactions were physical and face-to-face to one where virtual or cyber transactions now dominate. This has had a profound impact on the evolution of identity credentials and how these are managed. Just think of how many different passwords, PINs, ID cards, access cards, monthly passes you hold on to now compared with a couple of decades ago, and you can see tangible signs of changes in identity in terms of both scale and complexity. 

Out of this complexity we are now seeing a new stage of innovation in identity management, which is the move towards convergence of technology. For example this could be the coming together of logical and physical access on one credential, such as for an employee ID, or one-card campus IDs that allow building access, network access, parking, library checkout, vending machine payments and other applications. Increasingly we will see a variety of identity credentials moving into devices such as smartphones, where NFC technology allows the phone to act as a reader or a card, so that the consumer has an integrated credential for access, banking and other functions, all in one place. 

Identive - NFC SCL3711 Contactless Mobile Reader

The evolution of identity provides lot of opportunity for Identive to offer our customers enhanced security, but as importantly to do this in a much more convenient fashion. Security that is difficult for users to manage is harder for users to comply with and ultimately is weaker than security that comes naturally to users and easy for them to use. 

The SMART Sense: The means of “Identification” has gone through many evolutions. In your opinion, what is the future of “Identification”?

Ayman: We have seen that identification has been becoming increasingly electronic and increasingly contactless or RFID-based. What we are now seeing is that ID credentials are becoming interoperable across devices, so people are increasingly using the same card to go through the door or to access a network. We are also seeing different systems becoming interoperable, where a student ID card in a city is also working on the metro or mass transit of that city. So identification is benefiting from increasing sophistication made possible through the use of smart card technology and key management, with convenient RFID or contactless-based cards and credentials.

Identive - NFC SCL010 Contactless Desktop Reader

The SMART Sense: Speaking of Identive as a business entity, would you say that Identive’s rapid business expansion leans more towards a “Vertical” integration? Tell us more about Identive's business strategy.

Ayman: We don’t really look at vertical integration as a goal but a unique characteristic of Identive is that we are positioned along the value chain in Secure ID. In addition to manufacturing core RFID transponders and readers, we offer software and services, and on through to complete solutions. This is underpinned by our comprehensive and growing IP portfolio. In different vertical markets you will see that we operate differently because ID by definition is a multi-vertical market. Less than 10% of our business is in object or asset ID, and in this area we strictly operate as product suppliers working through our OEM and integrator partners. To a similar extent in the citizen ID market, where we offer readers for national ID and e-passports for example, we work closely with OEM and partner companies. The picture somewhat changes when you look at the enterprise employee ID and consumer ID markets, where we are much more active in offering solutions directly to corporate end-users and consumers as well as still offering our products and technology to OEM and integrator partners. 

The SMART Sense: Can we expect further acquisitions in 2012 or beyond? If so, what core offerings are you looking for in an ideal acquisition prospect?

Ayman: Our strategy continues be one that combines strong organic growth plans with a clear-headed approach to growth by acquisition. We acquire where it is cheaper to do so than that to develop and build organically particularly when we look at improving geographic coverage or to expand our vertical market reach. Our acquisition of polyright in the French part of Switzerland is a good illustration, which expanded us geographically and further added strength in the important payment and education sectors. 

The acquisition of idOnDemand gave us an immediate entry point into the SaaS business. Our focus has clearly been much more on organic growth in the last 18 months or so. We have nearly doubled our transponder production capacity, we have launched the SmartCore™ technology we developed for ID cards, we launched various cashless payment solutions and have used our unique expertise in both RFID and smart cards to propel us to the front in the world of NFC. But frankly in terms of technology acquisition, we think we are in a very good position and it would be unlikely for us to do more in this area. 

Ayman Ashour

The SMART Sense: Tell us about your vision regarding “Secure ID”. What motivated this vision of yours?

Ayman: Let’s start out by saying that ID without the “secure” bit basically covers any form of electronic or machine readable ID, be it a barcode or similar. This is a very large market, focused on identification of general objects be it for inventory or general tracking. Secure ID comes into play when we talk about ID for people; sometimes for higher value assets that we may want to track, but primarily for people. Why do we have ID for people? The answer is almost always to grant a privilege, whether it is as a license to do something, or to access a building, or to make a payment at a fast food restaurant, or to access a ski lift or get on a bus. These privileges have value and therefore we need a secure ID and not just a simple machine readable number.  Our vision is to bring together the convenience of RFID with the security of smart card technology to provide Secure ID that is easy for people to use and for organizations to manage.

The SMART Sense: Elaborate on Identive’s focus on building the world’s “Signature” Company in Secure ID.

Ayman: We basically want people to think of Identive whenever they think of Secure ID. The industry is growing very fast and is becoming much more relevant to people. We want to be at the center of this growth. We don’t want to be constrained by being wedded to a particular vertical market; we want our focus on having simple, effective, Secure ID solutions that are interoperable, easy to use and integrate.

The SMART Sense: What are your expectations on the much talked about “cloud-based” technologies concerning the ID and mobile industries?

Ayman: Cloud-based technology be it for consumer or enterprise applications offers a lot of promise. Cloud-based solutions tend to be much more cost effective, less specific platform dependent and just in short more flexible and easy to use. Organizations are increasingly recognizing the critical nature of identity management and see the multiplicity of credentials, particularly for physical access, to be a big hindrance in terms of both convenience and security. But the cloud model is a new concept and it will take time for people to get used to it and become comfortable. In reality, when it comes to how it actually works at the level of the security manager, it is identical in terms of control and of course totally transparent for the user. Over time I think it will become clear that the cloud actually offers greater security and redundancy and indeed flexibility to accommodate change. With our investments in idOnDemand and in the area of NFC, we are hoping to quickly demonstrate the benefits of the cloud-based model.

Ayman Ashour

The SMART Sense: Tell us more about Identity-as-a-Service. Who do you see fit to your customer profile?

Ayman: Basically our solution solves the problem of removing technical or logistical barriers to make it easier for people to work together without compromising their security and without having to replace all of their existing systems. So it is ideally suited for multi-campus, multi-location customers, particularly those created from the merger of different companies. This tends to result in many different legacy systems, all of which need to be coordinated under one system in a way that is not horribly costly. We are also a good fit for companies that may have some functions or divisions that need a high level of security and compliance and other parts that operate at more conventional levels of security. 

The SMART Sense: 2011 was largely anticipated to witness a huge adoption of NFC technologies, but fell short in a number of expectations. Can we now expect a similar vision for 2012? What are your thoughts about this? 

Ayman: You should have seen how it was in 2005! NFC is here, NFC is coming, and it is coming from the right players and at the right models on a global scale. It is important to look at the number of NFC phones and the number of models being announced day in and day out by the handset manufacturers. Frankly, we saw more NFC tagging volumes than we would have expected entering 2011 and project activity continues to be very strong. Having lived through the early days of NFC, in all honesty I think we now need to accept that NFC now appears to be virtually inevitable, so let’s move on.

The SMART Sense: The four major use cases for NFC are – Payments, Transportation, Identification and Marketing & Loyalty. What goes beyond these applications?

Ayman: NFC at its core is about convenience and it is about the consumer. Security in my view is a basic hygiene, it is unlikely to attract the consumer, but it can be a big turn off if it is seen to be a problem. You put a simple, secure, easy to use ID device in the hands of the consumer and the number of applications and possibilities are huge. Payment is interesting of course but is still a long way from being widely available. We are now looking at the things that we know consumers use Secure ID for such as payment and ticketing, and our logic is that consumers will jump into these applications. Along with physical access control and cyber or computer access, these are all important. But we suspect that the largest NFC trends will be elsewhere. Think of applications in universities, museums and social networking, for a start. Here and elsewhere there will no doubt be applications that no one has even thought of yet. 

The SMART Sense: By and large, the adoption of NFC needs more consumer education for it to take off. Are AskIdentive.com and IdentiveNFC.com part of Identive’s efforts? Share with us your involvement in consumer education of NFC technologies.

Ayman: Our focus thus far has been on the technical and developer communities rather than the consumer at large. We have a number of projects with our partners including handset manufacturers and telecos for the “tag in box” applications that help consumers become familiar with NFC when they purchase their new smartphones. Clearly AskIdentive.com and IdentiveNFC.com are providing an educational aspect, but especially IdentiveNFC.com is also growing as a platform for products and solutions offered in the field of NFC, which is easily accessible to the developer community and possibly some early adopter-type consumers.  

Ayman Ashour

The SMART Sense: Fortified with over 130 patents as Identive’s technology stronghold, share with us the importance of these gems that significantly represent Identive’s superiority.

Ayman: IP in general is comprised of a great deal of knowhow, methods and the like in addition to the patents and this is the case with Identive. Identive today boasts perhaps the world’s broadest range of antenna designs for HF RFID and in the area of NFC in particular, the widest range. Identive has been a pioneer in the area of use of a single credential for multiple applications, with a large number of installations in the field. If we look at specific patents granted and patents pending, we have a large number of examples that are relevant to markets where major growth is expected. This includes patents such as payment stickers using our Tag on Metal (tom™) technology, to OTP or One Time Password generation with NFC, to our recently announced SmartCore™ RFID inlay technology for ID card manufacture. 

The SMART Sense: What are the convergence trends influencing Identive?

Ayman Ashour

Ayman: There are several trends that we see as influencing Secure ID as a whole and thus Identive. The first is the integration of physical and cyber access systems and credentials. This integration has been happening for some time now and is one of the drivers of our business in the federal government space as well as in the enterprise level. A newer trend is the convergence of employee ID credentials with consumer type applications such as payment or transport. We are seeing increased demand for “smart city” and university or company campus cards that provide ID credentials as well as applications like bus passes and payment all on a single smart card. The marriage of secure identification technologies with mobile communication is evident in the coming proliferation of NFC-enabled smartphones, which opens significant new opportunities for both the product and service side. This ties closely with the emergent trend towards the “Internet of Things", where a device such as an NFC-enabled smartphone interacts with tagged objects in the physical world in order to make something happen in the virtual world. So for example tapping a tag might cause certain privileges to be automatically granted, or pairing two devices might enable the creation of a new application. This integration of the physical and virtual worlds is probably the most exciting trend and one that will eventually have the most impact on our daily lives.

The SMART Sense: Being a fanatic about smart technologies, what other interests do you have apart from technology?

Ayman: I love to read, mostly literature or history. I also love to ski and scuba dive and am into distance running. I am also very interested in the development of social media and similar technology.

The SMART Sense: As a husband and a father to two children, do you manage your household the same as you manage Identive with close to 400 employees?

Ayman: We as human beings tend to have similar approaches in most facets of our lives – how we read the situations before us, how we solve problems and how we communicate. Within Identive we are lucky to have a fantastic group of entrepreneurs with strong track records as managers in the tech world or as inventors. We work together as colleagues to manage the business each knowing our own role. I am a big believer in authority of competence rather than seniority or hierarchy. My own kids are not children anymore and in my household, I have always been a co-manager, I don’t really subscribe to expressions such as “head” of a household.

Ayman Ashour

The SMART Sense: Tell us something about yourself that the industry does not know about.

Ayman: It is actually kind of difficult to find something to reveal when I have been in the industry for so long and have a tendency to talk a lot. I guess not too many people would know that I am passionate baseball fan, a member of the Red Sox Nation but weirdly enough, several of my all-time favorite players have been New York Yankees and never played for the Sox. 

The SMART Sense: Most importantly, what can we expect from Identive and its business units in the next 5 years?

Ayman: The demand for core RFID technology will continue to grow with increased adoption of RFID applications. NFC adoption and growth will further boost adoption of RFID products such as NFC readers, terminals, posters, etc. As people’s identification credentials are increasingly moved into and used within the virtual world, security will continue to be an important trend as well. Identive’s aim is to be the signature company in Secure ID. To accomplish this, we must remain focused on innovation to bring value to our customers, on growth, and on managing our business to support a sustainable profitable bottom line. We can’t predict the future, but believe that our strategy sets us on a path to remain at the heart of the Secure ID market in the coming years.