New Cross Match CEO wants to further develop solutions business

PALM BEACH GARDENS, Fla.—On his sixth day on the job March 7, David Buckley, the new president and CEO of Cross Match Technologies, told Security Systems News that his goal is to “continue the evolution of the company from being just a technology player into providing a full set of solutions for the customer.”

Cross Match provides biometric identity management systems that capture and process biometric information. Its technologies including fingerprint, palm and full hand scanners, facial recognition, iris scanning, document readers and biometric software.

In business since 1996 and headquartered here, Cross Match also has offices in Washington D.C., Quebec and in Jena, Germany. It does cross-engineering with its office in Germany and has several partners it works with in Asia.

“From a technology standpoint Cross Match is the clear leader in the industry, but from a solutions standpoint, the company is on par with L-1 and Cogent,” said Buckley. Cross Match has 400 employees globally. In North America, its customers include “every agency in the Department of Homeland Security and Department of Defense and governments around the world,” local law enforcement and local schools “where we can help the schools match parents with the kids.”

On the private sector side, the company works in hospitality, gaming and financial services. “If you need to know who it is that wants to access your facility, database or data storage rooms, we can help you with that,” he said. “And we can register users of businesses' systems and technologies ... or employees before they can perform a trade or other business transaction,” he explained.

Buckley comes to Cross Match from Vectronix, a subsidiary of Safran Group, and a provider of optronics and advanced systems used by the military and first responders. At Vectronix, according to a Cross Match press release, Buckley grew the company “from a small reseller of quality products to a full integrator of mission-critical solutions for the military.”

His challenge at Cross Match is similar to his challenge at Vectronix. “They both have world-leading technology and engineering.” What Vectronix lacked and Cross Match is coming to grips with is the changing market which is now requiring turnkey solutions that integrators can apply.

Cross Match will be laying out a more formal plan and product roadmap in July or August, he said.

“Our goal is to make it easier for the integrator to do business with us. To get to the point where an integrator comes to us and says, 'Can you do that?' And we already have the answer.”