LEGIC makes move with Open Options

CARROLLTON, Texas—Open Options is now the first North American access control manufacturer to become a licensed partner of LEGIC Identsystems, a maker of contactless smart card technology based in Zurich. Though it has a large customer base in Europe, this agreement is the first piece of a new focus for LEGIC on the North American marketplace.

For Open Options, “it positions us to be in a good place to offer different solutions to our customers,” said Brent Doherty, director of marketing. For example, he said, LEGIC's technology and experience with cashless vending, biometric interfaces, and unique ways of using smart card technology will help Open Options' integrators get into new markets and grow their businesses.

“We're trying to ramp up our North American operations considerably,” said Brad Rollans, LEGIC's sales and business development manager for North America. With Open Options, existing LEGIC customers like BMW, Airbus, and Volkswagen/Audi now have a local access control provider, should they choose to take advantage of it, he said, “and the intention is to keep growing.” The Open Options deal is not exclusive.

As for LEGIC's selling points to Open Options dealers who might want to work with LEGIC, Rollans noted that LEGIC was the first to create contactless smart card technology, issuing its first card in 1992, and “all of our readers are 100 percent backwards compatible with all of our previous credentials.” Further, he noted, “we have one piece of memory—it's not pre-defined like a file cabinet. It's more like a thumb drive. Applications can be added without coordinating with other vendors. If the memory is available, the application provider takes the space required.”