Viisage Picks Up Technology Partner
By Andrea Gural
BILLERICA, Mass. - Facial recognition firm Viisage in October acquired a former technology partner to beef up its identity solutions offering and signed a host of multi-million dollar contracts for state driver's license projects.
The acquisition of Imaging Automation, a Bedford, N.H.-based developer of document authentication solutions, gives Viisage an end-to-end authentication offering and an entree into new market outside its traditional government and state drivers license customer bases. Those two markets are part of Viisage's core customer base; the company announced $10.91 million in contracts with five states for drivers licenses services in late October.
Viisage and Imaging Automation had already integrated for a product rollout of new product ViisageProof earlier this summer, said Maureen Todaro, director of marketing, communications for Viisage.
"Now, as a company, we have the ability to authenticate a document, we have deep experience in creating secure documents, and we have the biometrics to uniquely tie an individual to a document," Todaro said.
The addition of IA and its customer base will also allow Viisage to expand geographically in Europe, where the document security company is strong in border security, Todaro said. The purchase also gives Viisage added strength in the commercial market, particularly in the health care and financial markets.
Imaging Automation's revenues were about $6 million for the fiscal year ending Sept. 30, 2004, which represented a more than 100 percent increase over the company's previous fiscal year revenues.
"We are seeing a tremendous amount of consolidation and capital flow into the ID market, with the technology being used to authenticate and identify an individual, grant or deny access to a network, or track and monitor an individual," said Paul Talley, head of the security and defense practice of Cascadia Capital, which brokered the acquisition on behalf of IA.