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December 2004 • Volume 9 Number 12 |
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Executive Director's Letter Dear members and friends of the Alliance, Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, and Happy New Year to everyone. This is a great time of the year for each of us to take a minute to reflect on all that we have and hold dear in our hearts. If you have your health, close family and friends, and can make a living doing what you love as I have, than you really have it all. If you don't have those things in your life right now, be hopeful that 2005 will bring some changes to your life for the better. In the November newsletter, I spoke about some storm clouds surrounding the HSPD-12 policy directive. HSPD-12 called for NIST to develop a new government smart card standard to create a new Federal Information Processing Standard (FIPS 201). All of this effort needed to be done under very short timelines to meet the deadlines mandated in the directive. Since last month's letter there has been some good news to report and a great deal of progress has been made. The alarm bells that went off inside the government agencies already issuing, or about to issue, cards, and with the vendors who had built technology to the previous GSC-IS 2.1 standard resulted in a mobilization of an army of people getting involved in the standardization process.
1. What is Axalto's profile and what are its main lines of business? For the last three years, both Gartner and Frost & Sullivan have ranked Axalto as the number one worldwide supplier of microprocessor smart cards. Axalto's microprocessor smart cards are tiny, mass-produced computers designed to deliver secure, portable access to personalized services while protecting each user's privacy and identity. Axalto is also a major supplier of memory, magnetic stripe and other types of cards as well as payment terminals. The company offers a broad range of development tools, network solutions and implementation services that enable service providers, system integrators and other partners to rapidly and successfully deploy smart card-based solutions. Telecommunications, wireless services, finance, retail, transport, entertainment, healthcare, personal identification, information technology and the public sector are all markets the company serves. Austin, Texas is the headquarters for Axalto Inc., the company's U.S. subsidiary, as well as for business activities across all of North and South America. The worldwide technology and management team for Axalto identification and IT access cards is also located in Austin. Axalto manufactures its cards for the U.S. market in its facility in Owings Mills, MD, near Baltimore, which has a 40-year heritage of secure card manufacturing and produces about 60 million smart cards annually. Worldwide, the company's 4,500 employees come from 70 nationalities and serve customers in more than 100 countries, with unit sales of over 3 billion smart cards to date.
What are the differences between RFID tags and contactless smart card-based devices? With the growing use of both technologies, Smart Card Alliance members wrote this month's feature article that compares and contrasts the applications and capabilities of RFID tags and contactless smart card technology. The differences are important to keep in mind as the various forms of RF chip technology become pervasive in the market.
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Smart Card Talk spoke with Damon Turnbull, Marketing Director for Axalto's operations in North and South America. Mr. Turnbull currently oversees Axalto's strategic planning, marketing communications and alliance development activities in the Americas. Holding an MBA from Yale, he has marketed IT hardware, software and services for over a decade in 26 countries worldwide. Axalto is widely recognized as the world's leading provider of microprocessor smart cards, and was awarded the Smart Card Alliance 2004 Supplier Outstanding Achievement Award (OSCA) in October. 
RFID Tags and Contactless Smart Card Technology:
Executive
Director's Letter
