Interview with Alessandro Triglia and Grace Sigona of OSS Nokalva Inc.
April 2005
FB
Can you tell us about your BioFoundry suite of
tools and the ability to maintain standards based biometric
solutions?
OSS
The BioFoundry suite is a set of standards based
development tools. These middleware products allow developers to
quickly build standards compliant solution while enhancing their
product reliability, and reducing development and lifecycle costs.
The BioFoundry tools support BioAPI 1.1, and the ANSI X9.84
standards. We are committed to supporting BioAPI 2.0 and related
standards as they progress.
The
BioFoundry® BioAPI Framework is a full
implementation of the BioAPI 1.1 specification.
The BioFoundry® BSP Builder is a tool that
enables vendors of biometric hardware devices and biometric
algorithms to easily create fully BioAPI-conformant BSPs which
implement all standard features of BioAPI BSPs, including enrollment,
verification, identification, and database management
BioFoundry®
X9.84 is an implementation of the ANSI X9.84
standard, providing an easy-to-use API that enables applications to
handle X9.84 messages and perform cryptographic operations on
biometric data.
FB
Was 2004 a good year for your company?
OSS
It was. One of the significant changes we found
from prior years is that we, as the vendor, no longer had to make the
argument as to why standards are important. Customers came to us
already convinced that they were looking for standards based
solutions and standards based tools.
These customers are either themselves seeing the
benefits of following the standards, or are being driven by
requirements that are being defined to them.
FB
Your comments reflect exactly what surfaced as the
most pressing issue facing the industry during our Year In Review,
that being the need for standards and interoperability.
OSS
Yes, we are finding that our clients have
discovered that by using our products, they can develop and deploy
standards based solutions more rapidly. We recently responded to a
questionnaire from a government agency, an RFI that was issued, that
was extremely focused on wanting standards based components in all
the solutions. Everyone is talking about interoperability as a
requirement to achieve market growth.
Solution developers and customers of solutions are
finding that there is a need for standards conformance certification.
We have heard so many complaints about “conformance” and
the very subjective interpretation
of what conformance means. It is critical to
clearly identify what set of criteria are met for conformance to be
achieved. Without this clear identification neither developers, nor
customers of solutions, can have reliably met expectations.
FB
What are some of the advantages of your BioFoundry
suite of tools?
OSS
If we take a look at the components themselves:
1) We offer the BioFoundry BioAPI 1.1 framework,
which is a very robust implementation of the BioAPI 1.1
specification. The BioAPI framework, as are all of our biometric
products, is supported on a 24x7 basis, worldwide, by our expert
technical team. Quality software and support, critical in the fast
growing biometrics market, distinguishes our product from other
opensource solutions.
2) Our BioFoundry BSP Builder is a tool, which
helps developers to more easily build BioAPI compliant BSPs, or to
take existing non-compliant BSPs and make them compliant. We have a
customer who within a week or two of receiving the BSP Builder was
able to take two non-compliant BSPs from a third party vendors, and
make them compliant without needing a detailed knowledge of the
BioAPI specification.
3) Our X9.84 component is an implementation of the
X9.84 standard. Here again, I can offer an example of the tool’s
ease of use, and clear benefit. We had a customer who rather late in
his project cycle was presented with a requirement to be X9.84
compliant. Our customer had no experience with this standard, and
quickly and easily was able to develop a compliant solution.
We are currently working on a BioAPI 2.0 framework
implementation, which will include a BioAPI 2.0 BSP template, and we
will offer BSP adapters, which will allow developers to build
applications using the BioAPI 2.0 framework and BioAPI 1.1 BSPs while
BioAPI 2.0 BSPs are being developed. Applications can then work with
BioAPI 1.1 BSPs, and/or BioAPI 2.0 BSPs.
There has been some discussion within M1 and SC37
about multibiometric fusion. As a result of that discussion OSS
Nokalva submitted to M1 a new project proposal for an amendment to
BioAPI 1.1 in support of multibiometric fusion. This has yet to be
approved by M1, but the likelihood of approval is high. You will
probably see a national standards project for the support of
multibiometric fusion within BioAPI. This is very good news because
fusion is really important in many applications.
In our BioAPI 1.1 framework
we would of course support fusion, as we will with the BioAPI 2.0
framework. We are also involved in the development of the Biometric
Interworking Protocol (BIP) standard and one of the things that we
are looking at doing is, of course, when that standard becomes
finalized, providing a means to support a BIP enabled
framework. We are currently looking at ways to migrate users from a
BioAPI 1.1 framework to a BIP enabled framework.
FB
Can you give a sense of the timing around some of
these elements?
OSS
The final ballot for two key ISO standards in the
area of biometric architectures, BioAPI 2.0 and CBEFF, will begin in
SC37 approximately at the end of April. The publication of these two
standards by ISO, expected later this year, will be a milestone, but
SC37 is working on many other important standards projects. Some
examples are the technical report on multibiometric fusion, the
Conformance Testing Methodology for BioAPI 2.0, and the Biometric
Interworking Protocol (BIP), which enables standardized
communications between networked biometrics systems. Those projects
will likely be finalized in 2006.
There is intense standardization activity at the
national level as well, where M1 is working on many important
standards projects such as the Conformance Testing Methodology for
the ANSI version of BioAPI, which will probably be completed before
the end of this year. OSS is current under contract to develop a
conformance test suite for BioAPI for a U.S. Government agency.
The OSS BioFoundry portfolio will be considerably
expanded this year to support many of the new activities we have
discussed. We are working on several new additions/enhancements to
support BioAPI 2.0 – a BioAPI 2.0 framework, and adapters that
will support using BioAPI 1.1 BSPs with a BioAPI 2.0 framework;
multibiometric fusion; BIP; and BioGUI. We will also be porting our
portfolio to new platforms and provide support for a wider variety of
application development languages.
FB
With so much activity in the standards area, how
does this impact your business?
OSS
It presents terrific opportunities for us. This is
exactly our area of expertise - we provide products, consulting and
services. Also the adoption of standards really allows the biometrics
industry to take off. Once you have standards based solutions and
interoperability a lot of barriers that are slowing the industry down
are eliminated. So for all the vendors in the industry it is a very
positive thing.
One of the things we introduced last year is that
we segmented our biometrics group into a separate division called the
BioFoundry Division. This is an indication of our commitment to
standards based solutions in biometrics. We also have some new
product components in the works that will make the development and
deployment of biometric solutions even easier!
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