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IT player offers access control

IT player offers access control SCM Microsystems adds access control terminals

FREMONT, Calif. - Another IT company is entering the physical security market and this time it is SCM Microsystems making an announcement that it will offer access control terminals for access into buildings. The company is best known for providing logical access solutions for personal computers, but decided to delve into the physical security arena because of synergies that already exist between the two markets. “If you think of physical access, the control panel driving the door is a PC,” said Jason Schouw, vice president and general manager for SCM Microsystems Americas division. “It’s custom, but it’s one that we can link to.” For now, SCM Microsys-tems’ focus is on providing physical access control solutions to the government market, a space the company already dominates, but an area that it expects it can carve out a 25 percent market share. By 2006, Schouw predicts the company’s physical access control market could reach $13 million to $15 million in business by 2006. Eventually, SCM Microsystems plans to enter the commercial and mainstream market with its family of access control terminals, or readers. “Typically as the government uses something, it becomes standardized and there’s opportunity for commercial deployment,” explained Schouw. What makes Sun Microsys-tems’ approach in the physi-cal access control market unique is the company’s open platform, and long standing history as a chip, or interface supplier. The company plans to take the same approach in the physical access control market, providing systems integration companies like Northrop Grumman or Maximus with its access control reader. SCM Microsystems has already launched a protoype of its physical access control terminal and has several in pilot test projects. Mass production of the access control is scheduled to begin in July.

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