Category: MENA

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Aratek unwraps 4-4-2 ten-print scanner for large-scale jobs

TAIPEI, June 29, 2021 /PRNewswire/ — Aratek recently launched the A900 ten-print fingerprint scanner designed specifically for heavy-duty use in large-scale implementations.

The ARATEK A900 is the FBI Appendix F FAP 60 certified ten print 4-4-2 live fingerprint scanner built for the toughest and most massive of jobs. This IP65 rated portable unit comes a built-in 2.8” LCD screen plus a speaker which combine to give users a step-by-step audio-visual walkthrough of the entire enrollment, verification & identification processes.

The A900 is rated for superior image quality that exceeds strict standards set by the FBI for the use of Live-scan System (Rolls, plain & 4-finger) & Identification Flats (4-4-2 flats).

The newest Aratek fingerprint scanner is an FBI Appendix F certified FAP 60 device that comes in a rugged IP65 enclosure rendering it impervious to dust and moisture. This makes the A900 the ideal fingerprint solution in all conditions, working smoothly as it does even in the harshest of environments.

“With the pandemic forcing businesses and governments to give the digital-first strategy a serious thought, identification and authentication will continue to provide the security underpinning for this move towards complete digitalization,” noted Samuel Wu, Aratek’s VP for International Business Division.

Wu adds that in high-growth regions such as Africa, the A900 is well-positioned to be the backbone of digital identity solutions for applications that will soon become all-digital such as Finance & Banking, National ID, Voter registration, Census, Law Enforcement, e-Passport & VISA.

“Digital identity is reshaping business and governance in Africa and is making a real difference in people’s lives. In Togo, authorities found innovative uses for the new biometric digital ID card, expanding its usefulness from its traditional use as a voter ID into something that greatly facilitates the distribution of aid during the lockdown. Citizens only need to present their existing digital ID to get financial assistance. What can be more convenient than that?” Wu said.

The A900 features a built-in 2.8″ LCD screen plus a speaker which combine to give users a step-by-step audio-visual walkthrough of the entire enrollment process (sequence, position, enroll success & enroll fail, etc.).

Security is a strong suit of the A900, which uses AES-256 encryption to ensure fingerprint data is not compromised in transit as well as Live Finger Detection (LFD) to prevent fraud through spoofing.  The A900 also supports ISO19794-2, ISO19794-4, ANSI 378, ANSI 381 and WSQ to enable data interoperability across agencies.

The durable platen on the A900 is built to reject residues and is able to capture excellent images from any finger type — dirty, dry, moist or rough.

The A900 comes with a comprehensive SDK in line with Aratek’s strong emphasis on development and integration, supporting sequence checking, NFIQ fingerprint image quality check and slap fingerprint segmentation for 4-4-2 fingerprint acquisition.

About Aratek

Aratek is a global leader in the biometrics and securities industry. We dedicate to provide cost-effective products and tailored solutions. We enable governments, educational institutions, banks, and many other industries to become increasingly efficient. With our sophisticated end-to-end product portfolio ranging from fingerprint modules/scanners to biometric mobile terminals to facial recognition terminals, Aratek is here to provide real-world solutions to real-world problems.

Related Links:

https://www.aratek.co

Photo – https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1549681/Aratek_A900_4_4_2_FBI_FAP60_Ten_print_Live_Fingerprint_Scanner.jpg

 

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Nikkiso Clean Energy & Industrial Gases Group Announces Formation of Nikkiso Clean Energy & Industrial Gases (SEA) Sdn. Bhd in Malaysia

TEMECULA, Calif., June 29, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Nikkiso Clean Energy & Industrial Gases Group (Group), a subsidiary of Nikkiso Co., Ltd (Japan), is proud to announce the creation of Nikkiso Clean Energy & Industrial Gases (SEA) Sdn. Bhd. effective 1st July 2021. This company represents the combining of our two Malaysia business units: Cryogenic Industries and Cryoquip in a new joint facility.

This merger represents another step forward in the Group’s overall corporate growth strategy, emphasizing their ability to provide both global and regional support for sales and service. The name change emphasizes the support and strength of the larger Group; Clean Energy is the growth engine and Industrial Gases the core foundation.

The new, larger facility provides a strong support structure for future growth. Ideally placed within the region to support their key customers and provide an additional focus on clean energy, the 56,400 square foot facility is twice the size of their previous center. It has an improved capacity for loading flow and manufacturing for vaporizers, vacuum lines, process skid fabrication and assembly, refurbishment work, as well as pumps parts and service. In addition, it offers opportunities for sharing resources with other Nikkiso group companies (supporting Nikkiso Cryo or for fabrication of LEWA SEA and/or Geveke Malaysia skids).

According to Tim Born, the Vice President of Nikkiso CE&IG for South East Asia and Oceania;

“This new facility will provide a one-stop shop for the Nikkiso CE&IG Group’s cryogenic process equipment, installations and services. The amalgamation of our two businesses in Malaysia and the willingness to expand our facility and capabilities highlights our Group’s commitment to this region. Our new facility will provide timely local support for our complete range of products and services, and I look forward to working together with our customers and our talented local Nikkiso CE&IG team to provide the products and services this growing region needs.”

Nikkiso CE&IG (SEA) is responsible for business in South East Asia, namely Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, Indonesia, Philippines, Myanmar, Vietnam, Brunei, Laos and Cambodia, as well as Taiwan, Bangladesh and Pakistan, and provides support to the Middle East, India, Africa and Australia.

Contact Information:

Nikkiso Clean Energy and Industrial Gases (SEA) Sdn. Bhd. 199601016333
(formerly known as Cryoquip Sdn. Bhd. 388684-P)
Lot 862, Jalan Subang 8, Taman Perindustrian Subang
47600 Subang, Selangor, Malaysia

Tel: +60 3 8081 8330
Fax: +60 3 8081 8360
Email: [email protected] Website: www.nikkisoCEIG.com

ABOUT CRYOGENIC INDUSTRIES
Cryogenic Industries, Inc. (now a member of Nikkiso Co., Ltd.) member companies manufacture engineered cryogenic gas processing equipment and small-scale process plants for the liquefied natural gas (LNG), well services and industrial gas industries. Founded over 50 years ago, Cryogenic Industries is the parent company of ACD, Cosmodyne and Cryoquip and a commonly-controlled group of approximately 20 operating entities.

For more information, please visit www.nikkisoCEIG.com and www.nikkiso.com.

MEDIA CONTACT:
Anna Quigley
+1.951.383.3314
[email protected]

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The Globe and Mail’s Sophi.io Wins Digiday Media Award

Digiday awards Best Publisher Platform to Sophi.io, a suite of artificial intelligence-powered automation, optimization and prediction tools developed by The Globe and Mail

TORONTO, June 28, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Sophi.io, The Globe and Mail’s artificial intelligence-based automation and prediction engine, won the 2021 Digiday Media Award for Best Publisher Platform, which recognizes technology that is most successful in helping publishers achieve their goals.

“AI is an essential technology for helping publishers add authentic value to stories — extending their measure of success beyond page views and virality. For example, Sophi is able to provide data on how much each article on The Globe and Mail contributes to subscriber retention, acquisition, registration potential and advertising dollars. Additionally, to effectively deploy machine learning, around 10% of The Globe and Mail’s workforce is now data scientists and engineers, hired to develop Sophi and grow the strategy even further,” Digiday said.

The awards honour companies, technologies and campaigns that have stood out throughout the media over the past year. “This year, the competition was fierce and the programs robust. Innovation and big ideas expanded the playing field for many of the winners, even in a year when quarantines limited where and how people could work — and play,” according to Digiday.

Phillip Crawley, Publisher and CEO of The Globe and Mail, commented: “It’s an honour to be chosen as the winner of Digiday’s Media Award for Best Publisher Platform. We aren’t often up against companies in both the media and marketing industries but our investments in Sophi have been driven by the understanding that our technology can directly drive performance and economic growth for companies across a large range of industries.”

The other finalists in the Best Publisher Platform category were: Piano, Connatix, Insticator, Duration Media and Adapex LLC.

Sophi is an artificial-intelligence system that helps publishers identify and leverage their most valuable content. It has powerful predictive capabilities – using natural language processing, Sophi Dynamic Paywall is a fully dynamic, real-time, personalized paywall engine that analyses both content and user behaviour to determine when to ask a reader for money or an email address, and when to leave them alone.

Sophi Site Automation autonomously curates digital content to find and promote the most valuable articles. It places 99% of the content on all of The Globe and Mail’s digital pages, including its homepage and section pages. Sophi has been so successful that it is now being used for print laydown as well. Sophi is available to publishers across the globe to enable their content producers to focus on creating the best content possible.

Earlier this month, Sophi won the 2021 International News Media Association (INMA) Global Media Awards for Best in Show in North America and Best Use of Data to Automate or Personalize. Sophi has also won the Online Journalism Award (OJA) for Technical Innovation in the Service of Digital Journalism, handed out by the Online News Association (ONA), and both the World Digital Media Award and the North American Digital Media Award awarded by The World Association of News Publishers (WAN-IFRA) in the category of Best Digital News Start-up.

About Sophi.io

Sophi.io (https://www.sophi.io) is a suite of AI-powered optimization and prediction tools that helps content publishers make important strategic and tactical decisions. Sophi solutions range from Sophi Site Automation and Sophi for Paywalls to Sophi Analytics, a decision-support system for content publishers. Sophi is designed to improve the metrics that matter most to any business, such as subscriber retention and acquisition, engagement, recency, frequency and volume.

Contact

Jamie Rubenovitch
Head of Marketing, Sophi.io
The Globe and Mail
416-585-3355
[email protected]
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VoltDB Reveals Key Features to Optimize 5G, Cloud, and Edge

Leading Enterprise-Grade Data Platform Announces New Enterprise Capabilities

BARCELONA, Spain, June 28, 2021 /PRNewswire/ — VoltDB, the leading enterprise-grade data platform built to enable fast-data decisioning, today announced the release of V10.2 of its data platform at Mobile World Congress. The latest version of the VoltDB Data Platform adds important improvements that allow enterprises to take full advantage of 5G, cloud, and edge technologies, including enhanced integrations for Kafka and Kubernetes, improved cross datacenter replication, and an opportunity to bypass Kafka completely.

“Now with our complete cloud-native features, an enterprise or an operator can take advantage of VoltDB in environments such as AWS Outposts, Wavelength, and of course, the cloud,” said VoltDB CEO & President, David Flower. “This gives them a huge advantage when it comes to deploying latency-dependent applications that need both speed and data accuracy.”

The VoltDB Data Platform empowers companies to fully leverage new technologies and paradigms such as 5G and edge computing to get the most out of their latency-dependent applications. VoltDB’s core capability is powerful, real-time contextual decisioning via a simplified stack layer that manages data ingestion to action in under 10 milliseconds.

The latest version of the VoltDB Data Platform offers a number of improvements, including:

  • Topics, which provides the ability to publish event data directly to VoltDB without an intermediate messaging layer like Kafka.
  • Kafka API compatibility, which allows developers to use either VoltDB native APIs or Kafka APIs to process real-time events.
  • An improved Kubernetes Operator, which includes multiple enhancements and improvements based on various mission-critical deployments at tier 1 communication service providers (CSPs).
  • Multiple performance enhancements to the platform’s active-active-active cross datacenter replication based on feedback on the first generation of deployments.

These new capabilities enable current and future customers to take full advantage of their edge, cloud, and 5G investments today and in the future. MWC21 visitors, whether physical or virtual, can learn more by visiting VoltDB at stand #2060 in Cloud City (Hall 2) and by interacting with our onsite robots.

For more information on why organizations across all industries are choosing VoltDB to power their operations, visit https://www.voltdb.com/.

About VoltDB

VoltDB empowers enterprise-grade applications to ingest, process, and act on data in single-digit milliseconds to tap into new revenue streams and prevent revenue loss. With industry-leading customers in telecommunications, finance, gaming, and many other verticals, The VoltDB Data Platform is uniquely positioned to be the go-to technology for any company seeking to take full advantage of 5G, IoT, and whatever comes next.

Logo – https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1334383/VoltDB_Logo.jpg

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Synchronoss Technologies, Inc. Announces Pricing of $125 Million Public Offering of Senior Notes

BRIDGEWATER, N.J., June 25, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Synchronoss Technologies, Inc. (SNCR) (the “Company” or “Synchronoss”), a global leader and innovator in cloud, messaging and digital products and platforms, today announced the pricing of an underwritten public offering of $125 million aggregate principal amount of 8.375% senior notes due 2026, including the exercise in full by the underwriters of the underwriters’ option to purchase an additional $5 million aggregate principal amount of senior notes. The offering is expected to close on or about June 30, 2021, subject to satisfaction of customary closing conditions.

Synchronoss and the senior notes both received a rating of BB- from Egan-Jones Ratings Company, an independent, unaffiliated rating agency. The Company has applied to list the senior notes on the Nasdaq Global Select Market under the symbol “SNCRL” and expects the notes to begin trading within 30 business days of the closing date of the offering, if approved.

All of the senior notes in the offering are being sold by Synchronoss. Synchronoss anticipates using the net proceeds from the offering, and from the offering of common stock and sale of Series B Preferred Stock (each as described below), to fully redeem all outstanding shares of Synchronoss’ Series A Convertible Participating Perpetual Preferred Stock and repay amounts outstanding under Synchronoss’ revolving credit facility.

B. Riley Securities, Inc. (“BRS”) is acting as the sole book-running manager for the offering. Northland Capital Markets, Aegis Capital Corp. and EF Hutton, division of Benchmark Investments, LLC are acting as lead managers for the offering.

Concurrently with the offering, the Company is offering, by means of a separate prospectus supplement, $100 million of shares of its common stock. In addition, B. Riley Principal Investments, LLC (“BRPI”), an affiliate of BRS, has entered into an agreement pursuant to which BRPI has agreed to purchase $75.0 million of the Company’s Series B Preferred Stock in a private transaction to be completed concurrently with the closing of the offering.

The senior notes described above are being offered by Synchronoss pursuant to a shelf registration statement on Form S-3 previously filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and declared effective by the SEC on August 28, 2020. A preliminary prospectus supplement relating to and describing the terms of the offering is filed with the SEC and is available on the SEC’s web site at www.sec.gov. The final terms of the proposed offering will be disclosed in a final prospectus supplement to be filed with the SEC. Copies of the final prospectus supplement (when available) and accompanying prospectus relating to these securities may also be obtained by sending a request to: B. Riley Securities, Inc., at 1300 North 17th Street, Suite 1300, Arlington, VA 22209 or by calling (703) 312‐9580 or by emailing [email protected].

This press release does not constitute an offer to sell or the solicitation of an offer to buy any of these securities, nor will there be any sale of these securities in any state or other jurisdiction in which such offer, solicitation or sale would be unlawful prior to the registration or qualification under the securities laws of any such state or other jurisdiction.

About Synchronoss

Synchronoss Technologies (NASDAQ: SNCR) builds software that empowers companies around the world to connect with their subscribers in trusted and meaningful ways. The company’s collection of products helps streamline networks, simplify onboarding, and engage subscribers to unleash new revenue streams, reduce costs and increase speed to market.

Safe Harbor Statement

This release contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended, including but not limited to statements regarding the closing of the public offering and the anticipated use of the proceeds thereof. These forward-looking statements are subject to a number of risks, including the satisfaction of customary closing conditions related to the public offering and the risk factors set forth from time to time in Synchronoss’ SEC filings, including but not limited to the risks that are described in the “Risk Factors” and “Management’s Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations” sections (as applicable) of Synchronoss’ Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2020 and Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q for the period ended March 31, 2021, which are on file with the SEC and available on the SEC’s website at www.sec.gov. In addition to the risks described above and in Synchronoss’ other filings with the SEC, other unknown or unpredictable factors also could affect Synchronoss’ results. No forward-looking statements can be guaranteed and actual results may differ materially from such statements. The information in this release is provided only as of the date of this release, and Synchronoss undertakes no obligation to update any forward-looking statements contained in this release on account of new information, future events, or otherwise, except as required by law.

Media

Diane Rose
CCgroup
[email protected]

Investors

Todd Kehrli/Joo-Hun Kim
MKR Investor Relations, Inc.
[email protected]

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TRACE Foundation Announces Recipients of the 2021 TRACE Prize for Investigative Reporting

ANNAPOLIS, Md., June 25, 2021 /PRNewswire/ — The TRACE Foundation, a non-profit organization established to support projects that encourage greater commercial transparency, today announced the winners of the 2021 TRACE Prize for Investigative Reporting. The annual award recognizes journalism that uncovers business bribery or related financial crime.

Zorayda Gallegos Valle, a freelance journalist writing for El País in Mexico, won the TRACE Prize for her investigation that uncovered the Mexican Army’s scheme to divert at least $156 million of public resources through hundreds of shell companies contracted to complete infrastructure projects.

“I am grateful to the TRACE Foundation for supporting investigative journalism because it plays an important role in the transparency and accountability of governments worldwide,” Valle said. “Investigative journalism has become more relevant in Mexico and all over the world. It helps to disclose unlawful activities that authorities want to keep secret, and oversee their actions.”

The second recipient of this year’s TRACE Prize is the FinCEN Files reporting team, which included BuzzFeed News, the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) and more than 100 media partners. The team undertook a 16-month long investigation, reviewing thousands of financial intelligence documents. They uncovered a flawed oversight process that allowed global banks to profit from suspect transactions. Their reporting has resulted in new reforms and investigations in multiple countries.

“The FinCEN Files investigation exposed how some of the world’s biggest banks play an integral role in the global flow of dirty money,” ICIJ Director Gerard Ryle said. “Our findings have helped push forward important anti-money laundering reforms in some of the globe’s key financial centers, and this recognition from TRACE will help keep the issue in the spotlight.”

ICIJ also earned an honorable mention, along with the rest of the Luanda Leaks team, which includes FRONTLINE, the New York Times and 34 other media partners, for their work exposing the kleptocracy of Isabel dos Santos, daughter of Angola’s former president. They revealed how Western professionals play a vital, little-examined role in the blighting of the lives of countless Angolans.

Ferdinand Ayite of L’Alternative magazine in Togo earned an honorable mention for his Pétrolegate investigation, which found serious financial malpractice among Togolese government officials in charge of importing and pricing petroleum products.

“Even in the face of 2020’s chaotic circumstances, investigative journalists persisted,” TRACE President Alexandra Wrage said. “We commend the important work they do: their bravery, resolve and ingenuity. The TRACE Foundation extends its gratitude to our judges and admiration for our 2021 Prize for Investigative Reporting recipients and their important work.”

The judging panel for the 2021 TRACE Prize for Investigative Reporting included William Gumede, Diana B. Henriques, Rosebell Kagumire, Peter Klein, Donatella Lorch and Jorge Luis Sierra.

The TRACE Foundation will begin accepting submissions for the 2022 TRACE Prize for Investigative Reporting in the fall of 2021. For more details, visit traceinternational.org/investigative-reporting.

About the TRACE Foundation

The TRACE Foundation was established to promote, support and fund research, investigative journalism, publications, videos and related projects that encourage greater commercial transparency and advance anti-bribery education. For more information, visit traceinternational.org/tracefoundation.