Research and Development

Our leading-edge research and development is key to long-term client satisfaction, enabling us to deliver innovative solutions that help our customers differentiate themselves from the competition.
 

An outstanding track record

Gemplus has a long and successful track record in R&D. This is vital to securing the company’s future, boosting quality and adding value to the products and services we deliver to our clients.

We have consistently given a high priority to innovation, with R&D investment representing 6.6% of global revenue in 2005. This has enabled us to assemble a top-notch team of over 600 researchers, engineers and highly skilled technicians, including internationally renowned experts in security and cryptography.

To best serve our clients, our R&D centers are strategically positioned in key zones around the world, including La Ciotat (France), Ismaning (Germany), Singapore, Beijing (China), Vantaa (Finland) and Horsham (US).

Improved performance for our clients

To anticipate our clients’ needs, our research centers focused on a wide range of innovative and incremental developments in 2005, aimed at improving:

• Connectivity: by adding network capabilities
• Available memory space: by turning to new memory families such as “flash”, enabling the leap to gigabyte-sized cards
• Deployment and integration: by using standard tools and languages (e.g. Java and .NET) to develop card applications and accelerate the introduction of new products
•  Performance: by enhancing communication protocols and optimizing operating systems for both hardware and software • Security: by focusing on critical issues including secure printing for the identity sector
• Over-The-Air (OTA) update efficiency: by delivering a new generation OTA system capable of managing extra fast large-scale mobile campaigns.

Developing tomorrow’s products

We caused a stir at the international Java One conference in San Francisco in June 2005 when we unveiled a prototype secure card with optimized memory management capable of networking, executing several applications in parallel and loading Java programs using J2ME*.

In November, we won the prestigious Sesame Award for Best Software at the international Cartes 2005 exhibition with our innovative smart .NET** based platform. This reduces the effort needed to integrate secure devices (like dongles, smart cards etc.) into existing IT infrastructures, and enables governments, enterprises, businesses and consumers to benefit from the security of our solutions without the complexity.

All our research themes are designed to benefit our products of the future. Already in 2005 they were the subject of 48 articles in scientific publications. In addition, Gemplus researchers served on 28 scientific conference program committees.

Because of this intensive activity we lead our industry in Intellectual Property, ranking in the top 20 for the number of patents granted in France in 2004***. We are therefore well positioned to achieve our overriding goal, namely to anticipate and fulfill our clients’ needs.

Certified quality

Improving product quality and reliability is a major priority in our development centers. Testifying to the maturity of our software development processes, two of our key R&D teams, based both in France and Singapore, received CMM**** Level 3 certification in 2005. Two other teams have CMM Level 2. No other similar company has this recognition.

Certification and quality assurance also play a central role in our drive for enhanced product security, in line with the Common Criteria certification process. An outstanding example of this in 2005 was our release of the first contactless payment card certified by MasterCard®. We also received a FIPS ***** level 3 certification by the US Department of Defense.

Setting standards

Through intense participation in standardization activities, Gemplus is driving adoption of international norms, ensuring that different types of cards and applications work together seamlessly and speeding up the roll out of new technologies. Leading by example, we offer the widest range of interoperable cards, and with our commitment to the Java Card standard we deliver a flexible, secure experience to clients and end-users.

Leveraging our expertise through collaborative ventures

Gemplus is taking part in several publicly funded research projects. We are leading InspireD, the largest cooperative R&D initiative ever sponsored by the European Commission in the secure card domain. The consortium comprises the main European secure card players, including Europe’s five top card manufacturers, secure silicon chip vendors, innovative SMEs (Small and Medium Enterprises) and top academic units. The ambitious objective is to develop a common technology platform for the next generation of secure products called TPDs (Trusted Personal Devices).

Gemplus is also a board member of the Secure Communicating Solutions (SCS) Competitiveness Cluster, a French initiative aimed at boosting results-oriented R&D. SCS is a regional gathering of research and education players in the microelectronics, software, and communications sectors.