Questions and Answers from the Top

A Conversation with Rob Miskelly

• By Rob Miskelly
• Apr 13, 2007

THE security marketplace can be fickle, but for teamNiSCA a tremendous growth in unit sales in 2006 is paving the way for another great year. How does the company do it? Partnerships, along with resources, are extremely important in this industry. We caught up with sales manager Rob Miskelly and asked a few questions about the market and what it will take for a repeat performance.

Q. This year’s security market is shaping up to be a watermark year for sales and technology. How does teamNISCA view its strategies for success this year?

A. Team NiSCA had a great 2006—growing by 45 percent in unit sales. Our growth in 2007 will come from the same hard work, consistency in the channel and partnering with our integrators to help them make money. The NiSCA product offering will not change greatly in 2007, and we estimate a similar growth 2007. Our target customers have money to spend. As we have all seen, the markets are good, companies have cash and security is still a big concern. To further help our sales growth in 2007, it doesn’t seem like IT departments will be spending a great deal of money on new computer hardware and operating systems for office computers. IT departments seem to be in a wait and see mode with Windows® Vista. We anticipate seeing those dollars moving to new printers.

Q. teamNiSCA has introduced a new patent pending on the thermo-ReWrite Patch overlaminate. How will this product revolutionize your current offerings and what will it do for the customer out of the starting gate?

A. The TRW patch product that we introduced in 2006 fits well, and finally we see a growing smart card market. Companies are spending as much as $10 per card for contactless DESFire, MIFARE, iCLASS and Contact IC technology cards. Officials want to use the cards for more than one individual, such as temporary employees, vendors or visitors. Our new products allow companies to print on a technology card using our standard NiSCA printer and then laminate these cards with the re-writable material. Now you have a platform you can use for many individuals. There are no minimum order requirements, so it is very simple for a new customer to take standard in-stock cards and laminate them with the rewrite patches.

Q. FIPS-201 is in the news. How do you plan to attract customers to your marketplace over the competition?

A. The NiSCA dual-sided PR5310 or PR5350 printers are a great foundation to build FIPS-201-compliant cards. Each component of the NiSCA printer is modular and field installable, so this allows a customer to grow with their NiSCA system to print a compliant card. In addition, the current FIPS requirement does not require in-line encoding, but this might change in the future. With a NiSCA PR5350 or PR5310 printer, you can add in-line encoding.

Q. Talk about card thickness for a moment. What card thickness is recommended for each of your units and why?

A. Card thickness is really dependant on how much you want to pay for your cards, what infrastructure is in place and how long you want your cards to last. For example, in the novelty market, printing cards is an expensive piece of the puzzle, and a 10- or 20-mil PVC card will be cheaper than a 30-mil card. Life expectancy is not a great factor in this segment. We have other customers that need greater thickness—up to 50-mil—because they want to integrate multiple access control technologies into one card. Our standard products print on 20- to 50-mil cards, and we see that 90 percent of our business is for 30-mil cards.

Q. The layers of security on each card are critical. What are some of the most common features on today’s ID cards?

A. Today’s cards are absolutely more secure than just a few years ago. The main reason for this is the consistency holographic laminate manufacturers have been able to deliver in products. In the past, these laminate products were not very consistent and were really a headache for an end user on a daily basis. Today, we see the fear of lamination is gone, and customers see the added benefits of holographic laminates. Beyond the laminate, the use of UV inks greatly enhances card security, offering customers a feature that is invisible to the cardholder, but is easily identifiable by trained personnel. The key to securing your company’s card is to integrate numerous features such as a popular holographic laminate, variable UV inks, microtext in the laminate and from the printer, and metalized holograms embedded in the card surface.

Q. What new trends or technologies do you see impacting the security market for ID printers in 2007?

A. We believe that 2007 will be a great year for in-line encoding for smart cards. Products offered include MIFARE, iCLASS, DESFire, Contact IC, Prox and Legic encoders (Prox is read only). Our access control partners are pushing these features to their channels.