by Ronnie Teo, firstname.lastname@example.org. Posted on July 19, 2012, Thursday
KUCHING: Datasonic Group Bhd (Datasonic) continues its pursuit of providing information and communications technology (ICT) solutions including the smart card personalisation, with one of its key projects being the MyKad.
The group’s independent non-executive chairman, General Tan Sri Dr Mohamed Hashim Mohd Ali, explained how the group came about to receiving the project.
“We were incorporated on March 13, 2008 as a public limited company. As an investment holding company, the group has completed its acquisition of Datasonic Corporation Sdn Bhd, Datasonic Technologies Sdn Bhd and Smart Consult Solutions Sdn Bhd in year 2012,” he said.
“Dibena is our parent company and also our promoter and substantial shareholder of Datasonic. Dibena will hold 53.06 per cent shareholding of Datasonic upon the group’s listing.”
Hashim noted that Dibena was the chairman and key consortium member of GMPC Corporation Sdn Bhd, a consortium of five companies which consists of Dibena, IRIS Technologies (M) Sdn Bhd, Unisys MSC Sdn Bhd, Tricubes NCR JV Sdn Bhd and CSA MSC Sdn Bhd.
“Under the Multi Purpose Card Flagship Application launched by the government in 1999, the government had awarded the Government Multi-Purpose Card (GMPC) project to GMPC Corporation to jointly undertake and implement the national ID project for MyKad, MyKid and MyPR.
“Dibena, being the key consortium member of GMPC Corporation, was responsible for the entire design, set up, development, delivery, testing, commissioning, implementation, maintenance and consultancy of the entire GMPC national ID systems for Malaysia.”
As a total solutions provider, Datasonic provides a wide range of products and services, ranging from provision of printing system and solutions, supply of consumables, turnkey project management, consultancy, technical and maintenance services to our client across the government and non-government sectors.
“Our revenue stream mainly comes from our the sales of products and provision of our services, smart card personalisation services as well as smart card printer software development, amongst others,” Hashim added. “As of financial year ended 2011 (FYE2011), we have more than 50 customers across the governmental, financial, commercial and telecommunication industries.”
In particular, Datasonic is involved in the provision of system design, set up and commissioning of the Personalisation Center for National Department of Malaysia as well as the supply of personalisation system and solutions, consumables, maintenance and technical support services to NRD since year 1999.
“For Immigration Department of Malaysia, we have been involved in the provision of Visa and Pass system since 1997 to present to provide maintenance and technical support of the system,” he revealed.
“We are also involved in the provision of Data Centre and Helpdesk system and provide consumables and maintenance services for existing passport printer for Immigration Department locally and overseas including in Singapore, Indonesia, Australia, United Kingdom as well as the US.
“In addition, our BPA projects were also expanded to the Prime Minister’s Department and 17 other ministries and 21 government agencies.”
Apart from working closely with Datacard Corporation to develop the centralised issuance systems and solutions for the national ID project for NRD as well as the new passport polycarbonate project for the Immigration Department of Malaysia, Hashim noted that they held several close partnerships with regional players as well.
“We worked with Digital Identification Solutions AG from Germany to develop the decentralised printing system and solutions for the NRD at branch level, including the new NRD branch for the first Urban Transformation Centre launched by our Prime Minister in June 2012 in Melaka.
“We also work closely with Trüb AG Switzerland in our proposed passport project to design and customise the polycarbonate datapage for the Immigration Department of Malaysia,” he noted, adding that the new proposed design for the polycarbonate datapage for the new Malaysian passport was customised specifically for the Immigration Department of Malaysia.
“In addition, we integrate our solutions to perform the personalisation of the polycarbonate datapage and chips by using Datacard Corporation PB6500 passport printing system.
“At the branch level of Immigration offices, we worked with IXLA SA in the development of customised solutions for the production of high-security e-passport document with new polycarbonate datapage by using IXLA’s XP4 laser printer.”
These strategic partnerships with world-class multi-national companies such as the above provided Datasonic with a wider range of products and solutions and have further strengthened its portfolios.
“The partnership with these foreign smart card players who are established global readers in the smart card industry has also enabled us to reach out to a wider target market and broader market segments,” he concluded.