Customers don't want to endure the trouble and expense of changing everyone's card or badge to accommodate a new system, which means the controller must support existing readers. Also, most large companies have many buildings, secured by systems from many different manufacturers. The problem was finding an integrated, networked package that met SAI's needs. You could find a microprocessor using standard Intel hardware, but you were kind of on your own in terms of the operating system. The only thing SAI needed to add, besides its proprietary Unix software, was an RS-485 serial card.
Eon comes with serial, parallel and USB ports built in.
One example is the authentication of users who log in to corporate computers over the Internet. We want to change that. He said the identification process would be distinct from and independent of the user's location. That will give hackers a whole new level of challenge. The company also announced its first Windows CE thin clients at the beginning of the year.