March 24, 2008 - Andrew Strauch is VP of Product Marketing Management at Mikoh Corporation.

Were there any interesting pilot projects that you guys worked on that you would like to share with us?

Strauch: There are a number of government applications – people taking briefcases and sealing them with a loose seal version of our tag. Basically, we wrap a loop around the RFID tag and seal it to the other side and when someone cuts it or removes, you know that has been done. So, when you are handing it off.

This is document tracking, basically – people, law firms and government agencies who want a place where you put the documents into what they want to be secure containers. Seal it up with a tag, and then they will understand the whole life cycle history of that product, of that asset. And, and track it from a security perspective.

So, these types of systems have closed the loop hole. This is physical security. They recognized in the government that one of the very secret intel agencies, we have just completed a technology transfer deal with them. They came up with a very similar design as ours. And what we have done is join forces with them to tag it broader, within the U.S. Government, in fact, U.S. Government will arrive.

Where else in the Government have you been selling?

Strauch: We have sold them into several agencies. We are doing platforms. But, the role now is going to be phenomenal, you know, tagging real items. It is mobile phones, it is disk drives, it is photocopies. They shoot things around all over the world. They haven’t even got a bar code system in place. They are using a wire trace with a little lead crimping tool to seal things.

You can go to the hardware store and buy a little bit of wire and lead and I could do it in, you know, half an hour. So, they are really looking to leap frog, to get into some really high security applications, using RFID.

Have you really heard of any of the clients, customers you have worked with, release any successful ROI stories after implementation?

Strauch: Well, the Bermuda EVR is out there. That they talk about several years saving over eleven million dollars. So if you do a Google search on Bermuda EVR, it talks, it is very high level ROI, but it basically talks to the solution in general and they don’t, they don’t drill down and say, hey, it was all enabled because of physical security, but, physical security is at the backdoor, characteristics of the solution, because without that, you can move this from car to car.

Once again it is that one-to-one relationship between the asset and the tag. You can still move it from car to car, but you’d have to remove the windshield of a Toyota and put it onto another Toyota, right?

Is this all encompassing? No, there are ways to get around it, but it becomes very, very expensive. They are actually predicting that their unregistered vehicle rates, which are between seven or eight percent now. I forget the exact number, but the ROI numbers are calculated off that. They are predicting that that rate will go down to less than one percent unregistered with the new system.

Why such a big drop?

A: because now, I mean, it is really around ease of monitoring the vehicles. So, today they only monitor the registration on a vehicle when they are pulling you over for speeding or some other reason. So, far less than one percent of the vehicles are ever even checked. And now you have a gateway that, just like a speed pass, those cars are going by, you know, they are checking them real time.

Does the technology allow to check into the vehicle history, Insurance etc…

Strauch: Yes, and you’ve got your emissions, etc. Then you have a cop stationed down the road, like you do with speed traps, and they just pull you over. So, are not burning all this labor to check registration. You have got an infrastructure in place.

A regiment of a car accident situation where, you know, there is a police officer, comes up with a way to identify the cars, the owners and there is no question about whether the car was, you know, at that, at that scene or, you know, ceased evidence, you know. All it really does is protect somebody, you know, if a pedestrian gets hit by an unregistered vehicle, I think that is the main thing, making sure that if you are out there on the road you are registered. That is where the EVR come in.

So the technology is forcing drivers to be accountable?

Strauch: Absolutely. And, you know, everybody has got to pull their own weight. This is a huge revenue source for the Government. If ten percent of the people aren’t paying, well, by the way, that’s eleven million dollars I believe they are losing now, could be used to improve the overall infrastructure… by generating actual paid revenue.

And, you know, the registration label, you don’t have to, get one in the post. It actually regenerates as you drive. So you might put, say online and you are driving by and the next picture, updates you for a year.