Feature Company

Interview with Mizan Rahman, CEO M2SYS Inc.

April 2006

FB

Can you please provide our readers with a brief background of the company?

MR

At M2SYS we deliver very innovative, fully functional, enterprise fingerprint recognition software that can be quickly integrated and deployed by any software company through a patent-pending integration methodology. So in short, we are providing rapidly adaptable fingerprint technology to software development companies. And, our innovation applies to integrating any form of biometric technology. Initially we started in public safety. We have dozens of jails all over the US using our software. In most of these facilities our product is integrated with their local JMS (Jail Management Software). When we started in this segment we quickly found out that end users don't want to deal with managing another software product, they want the fingerprint functionality to be part of their every day software. This can prove to be challenging for software companies that are always busy enough with their own technology, their own development, and view incorporating fingerprint recognition without the proper resources, time, and budget as extremely cumbersome. So we took this opportunity to come up with our technology, which can be painlessly integrated by any software company. Currently we are working with integrators in public safety, fitness and health-club management, health care, banking, transportation security, time and attendance, school management, POS, and child care. We have hundreds of software companies all over the world that have integrated our software and are distributing it as their own seamless fingerprint module to thousands of end user customers.

FB

You mentioned that you are working in several vertical industry sectors. Where do you see the greatest growth when you look at those different sectors?

MR

You would be surprised. Three or four years ago fingerprint technology was really absent in the private sector so we were all trying to do business with the government, but in the past year or two we have seen huge demand in the private sector for fingerprint recognition across a number of industries. One of our most successful industry sectors has been in leisure related membership management software. In fitness clubs, for example, people like the ability to just have their finger scanned and not have to deal with cards or any other forms of identification. We have been very successful in that area and are dominant in that market right now. We are also seeing a tremendous amount of growth in healthcare to eliminate passwords, secure access to sensitive data, and even identify patients, as well as in education for areas like lunch line and library automation, and student attendance. Time and attendance in general is another very popular area because it prevents buddy punching. So I see that the biggest growth for fingerprint recognition or other forms of biometrics is in many verticals of the private sector because the fear of government looking at you is not there any more. There is a lot of growth that I see in this segment even though some of the big players continue to concentrate on government. The private sector is a huge growth area.

FB

What type of security features do you employ to ensure privacy and protection of the information collected?

MR

First, we do not actually save the fingerprint images. It is an option only in our product and we only turn that option on for customers that have a specific need to save the image, such as law enforcement. This is an extremely important feature because without the image there is no privacy risk. We use a one-way algorithm to extract the unique fingerprint pattern data, which is stored in the form of what we call a "biometric identity template." The fingerprint image cannot be recreated from this data. Also, all the data is highly encrypted in our system. We are extremely careful with what can be done in our system because we know privacy is the biggest concern from end users. At M2SYS, we don't just provide the building blocks, we provide a complete, end-to-end solution to the market.

FB

Following up on that, what are some of the benefits of choosing an M2SYS solution over let's say a standard SDK solution?

MR

People who work with fingerprint technology daily find out very quickly that it is not a simple solution. There is so much to it and the complexities involved require specialized knowledge to build a very robust system. There is the device, the hardware, the user interface, client/server, encryption security, and transmission. You have to understand this whole spectrum of how the system works and how you can make it better. This is absolutely critical in developing a good fingerprint module. A typical software company, who understands the complexity of developing a product and providing ongoing support and maintenance, knows that this could be really cumbersome. Therefore, even though lots of software companies love fingerprint technology, they get turned off by the huge investment and commitment needed to produce the solution themselves and that's where M2SYS comes in!

There is no investment or commitment because M2SYS' technology is a fully developed and quickly integratable product. Plus, our system operates with complete run-time independency, which means integrators never have to compile their software with ours. This means they can remain totally focused on their core product without having to worry about how any changes will affect the fingerprint module. Essentially, a software company could come to us and within a few hours we can finish the basic integration. It is very simple and this is the power of what we have invented. It takes no time to create a simple link from their software to our complete system because we have an extremely innovative integration methodology that we developed. They can just integrate and begin deploying it right away. Our system supports many development environments and also works in Citrix and Microsoft Terminal Services. Once the integration is done, M2SYS is behind the scenes supporting the product so if anything happens then we are standing by ready to help. With an SDK, all you get is the building blocks. You have to build everything yourself, you have to support it by yourself and if something goes wrong, it is you who has to handle it.

FB

Can you elaborate on how you work with your integration partners providing support, etc?

MR

The supportive services we offer, both technology and sales and marketing, is another major differentiator for us. When we bring on a new integrator partner, we assign a 100% dedicated M2SYS engineer to help their engineering team finish the integration so the entire process can be completed as expeditiously as possible. Once they have integrated and released the fingerprint module to a production environment, if a client calls and there is a critical technical problem like secondary support, our integrator partners call on us. We work with them very closely answering any questions about our product and resolving issues. We even employ something that we call "pre-emptive tech support," where our engineers will periodically contact our integrator partners just to see how things are going, get feedback, ideas, and suggestions on the system, and address issues before they escalate. When we issue a new release we work with them to make sure everything is updated smoothly. Our success has been due, in large part, to our reputation of providing our integrator partners with "industry best" tech support.

In addition to tech support, we also proactively work with our integrator partners on sales, marketing, and training initiatives to help drive demand for the solution. This enables them to achieve a rapid ROI and fully capitalize on the potential that we already know exists for their fingerprint module. We offer a range of tiered partner programs that include a variety of incentives and dedicated marketing support. Since it's not our business to try and sell as many copies of an SDK as possible to stay afloat, it is in our best interest to ensure our integrator partners are as successful as possible.

FB

What's next for the company?

MR

Next for the company -- we just keep growing!! We are focused on continuing to grow our integrator partner base. We are exploding in a number of vertical markets and will continue to capture market share. We are also planning to work with the prominent biometrics companies in the market to support the integration of their SDKs with our unique methodology. We would like to see Bio-Plugin become the method of choice for biometric technology integration in the marketplace.

In addition, we are also experiencing a lot of growth in delivering a "snappable" version of our solution. Not everybody can use a low level SDK to adopt a fingerprint recognition system because it costs too much money and time to integrate a new module, so our software can also be snapped right onto a product that didn't have fingerprint technology before. Right now we are working with several end users that are using, for example, third party accounting or school lunch room packages. They want fingerprint capabilities in those software solutions, but we may not have the immediate opportunity to work with the companies that developed those solutions on integrating our system. Therefore we are now ramping up a lot of channels to end user markets to allow them to "snap" our fingerprint module directly into their large software packages. It is a great time for our company because our solution is really being understood in the marketplace and with our dedication to client support we feel we have a winning combination.

FB

Thank you very much for taking the time for speaking with us.

MR

My pleasure.

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