Amdahl Launches SmartCard Technology Institute To Provide Education For Successful Smart Card Business Strategies - Company Business and Marketing

Edge: Work-Group Computing Report, Feb 15, 1999

In its role as founding sponsor, The SmartCard Group, a division of Amdahl Corporation, Tuesday announced the creation of the SmartCard Technology Institute (SCTI). The SCTI will provide structured education programs on smart card technologies to financial services, retail, transportation, telecom, insurance and government organizations.

This will enable executives in these industries to make informed business decisions that advance the use of smart cards. "After several false starts, North America is now moving into a global marketplace that uses more than a billion smart cards," said Catherine A. Johnston, President and CEO of ACT (Advanced Card Technology Association of Canada). "We at ACT have been concerned about a critical lack of knowledge and resources to implement the many projects that will emerge in the marketplace. We see this initiative as both timely and necessary to the successful advancement of this technology." Smart cards are similar in appearance and size to a credit card. They feature embedded chips with a microprocessor that allows users to access a variety of applications that can be stored on the card. In October 1998, Gartner Group released the results of a study that forecast the worldwide smart card market growing at an annual rate of 44.1 percent to US $4.8 billion by 2002. As a result, the institute was formed to answer business needs in a global marketplace that will grow exponentially. The institute will be launched in Toronto, Canada on March 4, 1999. The launch will include a keynote address from Duncan Brown, Director, North America, Ovum Inc. Ovum is an independent research and consulting company offering expert advice on IT, telcoms and new media. Mr. Brown is the co-author of the (1)Ovum report on The Balance of Power: Uncertainty and Opportunity in the New Smart Card Market. Catherine Johnston, President of ACT Canada will also present a smart card industry perspective. Following the launch, the first executive education session for CEOs, CIOs and senior managers whose business will be affected by smart card technologies is scheduled in Toronto in March 99. Shortly thereafter, there will be sessions in New York, Washington DC and San Francisco. Sessions will address the enhancement of service delivery using smart card technology, how to contain fraud and how businesses are using smart card technology to gain competitive advantage. The institute is enlisting partners to provide additional expert program content and technical resources, including corporations and educational institutions. "The Amdahl SmartCard Group is at the forefront of providing our customers with innovative and efficient ways to gain competitive advantage in a changing marketplace," said Joseph Casola, General Manager of the Amdahl SmartCard Group. "The capability to provide industries with an educational environment such as the SCTI, showcases our commitment to developing and deploying programs that enable businesses to make informed decisions about implementing technology to meet their needs." Murray Johnston, President of SCTI, characterizes the SCTI mission as, "building the market through fact-based learning and strategic thinking." He added, "Business leaders need to know the challenges and opportunities associated with the advancement of multi application smart cards. Key areas of interest are partnerships, application sharing, interoperability, infrastructure, standards and security." Amdahl Corporation is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Fujitsu Limited, a leading provider of information technology products and solutions for the global marketplace with revenues of $37.7 billion in the fiscal year ended March 31, 1998. Amdahl provides integrated enterprise computing solutions designed to meet the needs of the leading, most compute-intensive environments around the world. Amdahl has over 25 years of experience with large-scale computing solutions and client/server technology. The company supports heterogeneous architectures found in mission-critical customer environments that blend MVS, Windows NT, and UNIX operating systems. Headquartered in Sunnyvale, California, Amdahl combines hardware and software products and services methods with world class offerings to create customized solutions that help clients gain a competitive advantage in their industries. FMI: www.amdahl.com. (1) Published in May 1998.