Although good for the industry, this is very bad news for NRID specifically.
NRID tried to take control of software applications in biometrics when it was the first to come out with an API. The first carrot NRID held out was the API itself. Obviously, NRID hoped that HA-API would be adopted as the industry standard, and hardware providers would funnel their applications through NRID-based software. That didn't come through, because the big players announced BioAPI in April 1998.
The second carrot is a bit more hidden from view, but its outline, at least is visible. You have to ask yourself, Why did NRID continue to attract any new partners (or even keep its old ones) after the BioAPI alliance announced itself? Clearly, if Compaq and IBM and Novell weren't signing up to the HA-API, it wasn't going to become a universal standard. The best NRID could hope for in that circumstance would be competing APIs. Well, NRID had to be able to credibly promise some worthwhile business for the hardware providers. And what would that be? It could be something else, but my best guess is DoD business.
DoD didn't give NRID a pile of money for developing HA-API. And NRID had to have invested a fair amount of resources to come up with it. So how were they to be repaid? Probably, DoD promised that in return for the API development, DoD committed to using an HA-API approach in its future applications. Given the size of the DoD market, and the high likelihood of sales there fairly soon, it would be worth a lot to NRID to have a gatekeeper role on that business -- enough to attract partners despite a competing API.
So what has happened? If this combining of forces was going to be good for NRID specifically, they would have done it many months ago. Instead, they seem to have been holding out, hoping to keep exclusivity with their partners. It looks to me as if BioAPI was able to break the NRID alliance by promising the partners that the two standards would be made compatible so that there would be no retooling needed for the Who?Visions, Veridicoms, etc. They could join into the wider biometric world where BioAPI was clearly going to dominate, instead of owning, with NRID, a much smaller DoD market. In a sense, the larger NRID's alliance became, the weaker it became, since each member was competing against each other for a constantly diminishing opportunity at a fixed market. Only NRID was winning.
So BioAPI essentially made NRID's partners an offer they couldn't refuse. They get access to broader markets. The industry unifies under a common API (and Microsoft's participation becomes much less critical). But NRID no longer (a) has DoD (or whatever) locked up, since HA-API and BioAPI are compatible; (b) no longer has exclusive partnerships; c) now competes head to head in all arenas against better funded and active competitors (instead of enjoying a safe harbor with DoD, etc.); and, (d) has no software head start in the new BioAPI universe.
NRID has no significant strategic assets left -- unless you call occasional small infusions of cash from its vulture capitalist owners an "asset."
Learn to recognize bad news. |
