Raiding the Labs

The last place I thought I'd find a biometric scanner is at Fujitsu. Disk drives, after all, are Fujitsu's bread and butter; the vendor, in fact, has invested more than $800 million to develop perpendicular recording, a technology that may increase hard-disk storage capacity fivefold over the next five years. So what's Fujitsu doing developing a biometric scanner? Taking opportunity where it sees it.

First, an editorial on biometrics. I hate it. Here's why.

All of those technologies--iris scanners, fingerprint scanners and facial recognition--present the same problems: They're expensive, they're difficult to manage, and they yield high false-positive and false-negative rates. While I wish the technology was as simple as it is on "Star Trek," passwords still rule the authentication world.

Unfortunately, the days of the simple password are fleeting. Even though policies that dictate complex passwords of minimum lengths have extended the life of this venerable technology, it's only a matter of time before a password simply won't be enough to protect systems and data.

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It's sad but true that biometric vendors were elated by the prospect of forthcoming security dollars after 9/11. They thought a lot of that money would be used to buy their fancy devices. The applications were endless: logical security for computers, physical access for restricted areas in buildings and airports, and document authentication. But as it turns out, biometrics has only found its way into highly classified areas of organizations.

But is widespread deployment far behind? Lenovo and Hewlett-Packard are OEM-ing fingerprint scanners into notebooks. And Fujitsu has released a prototype of its Palm Scan, a device that identifies individuals by the vein patterns in their hands. It's bulky, though, with a raised handrest to ensure the palm is a proper distance from the scanner surface.

But, again, why would a disk-drive company venture into biometrics and push a security product through its tried-and-true storage channels? In short, Fujitsu is raiding its R&D labs and giving its partners an opportunity to be innovative.

"The solution providers will design this technology into their systems," says Lorne Wilson, Fujitsu's senior vice president of sales and marketing. "We're not expecting to build a billion-dollar business with niche products. We just want to expose our partners to products beyond storage and drives."

Often, sales are simply a matter of having something new to talk about. Customers already know all about the products you've been selling, so you need a good story the next time you call. For some Fujitsu partners, it's biometric technology that's being incorporated into homegrown access-control systems.

The lesson: A vendor's backing of its partners isn't always about pricing, margins and sales support. Sometimes it's about providing those partners with the technology they need to be innovative on their own.

MEANWHILE, WE'RE REWARDING GOOD WORK here at VARBusiness by promoting two of our venerable staff members.

Associate managing editor Cristina McEachern, who has stood at the helm of our sister magazine, GovernmentVAR, is taking over the VARBusiness 500 franchise. You'll be seeing a lot more articles by her on business strategy and VAR500 analysis. And sections editor Gayle Kesten, who has worked tirelessly behind the scenes to make VARBusiness run smoothly, is taking over the editorship of VARBusiness.com, overseeing the magazine's rapidly expanding online operations.

On another note...from now on, publisher Robert C. DeMarzo's column will appear on the coveted back page of VARBusiness (page 94 in this issue).

Lawrence M. Walsh ([email protected]) is the editor of VARBusiness and GovernmentVAR magazines.