NEC Wins Big at the Frost & Sullivan's 2016 Awards Banquet for its NeoFace® Facial Recognition Suite

The award validated NEC's commitment to addressing customer needs through deep technological innovation

SANTA CLARA, California, Dec. 19, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- NEC Corporation of America (NEC) took the honors in the prestigious Company of the Year award category at Frost & Sullivan's 2016 Growth, Innovation and Leadership Awards gala, which celebrated the achievements of best-in-class companies in diverse industries. John Dowden, senior product manager of NEC Biometric Solutions, joined the upper echelons of industry stalwarts when he accepted the award on behalf of NEC at the black-tie event Sept. 12 at the Hyatt Regency Santa Clara.

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NEC has consistently outclassed the competition with its customized solutions. Its novel NeoFace® portfolio underlines its dedication to addressing customers' demands by maximizing output according to the operational needs of diverse projects and use cases. With its superior technology and core algorithms, including the capability to identify facial areas and unique facial features, issues such as poor illumination and image quality have become moot.

"Acknowledging the importance of timely detection and shorter engagement times for improved safety, security, and convenience, NEC has increased the speed of match processing in databases to up to 3.02 million images every second. This is almost twice the average processing speed of its competitors," said Frost & Sullivan Senior Research Analyst Nandini Bhattacharya. "Furthermore, NeoFace guarantees customers 28% greater accuracy than the industry average."

NEC boasts extensive product research and development, having established laboratories all over the world: three in Japan, two in the United States, and one each in Germany, Great Britain, Singapore, and China. It also established a National Technical Assistance Center that delivers end-to-end assistance in staging, configuring, maintaining, and upgrading its solutions.

The benefits afforded by the NeoFace® solution make it the face recognition technology of choice for government and public safety agencies, large enterprises, and corporations. Its applications include:

• Border control. The solution matches images of travelers with their electronic images in ePassports, empowering US Customs and Border Protection  to identify visitors unlawfully seeking access into the country. The solution does not slow the check-in or check-out process, which is a common issue with other biometric systems.
• Express access control. It uniquely enables rapid access (nearly 1,800 per hour) to secure locations, opening numerous applications in border control, critical infrastructure, theme parks, stadiums, and venues.
• Departments of transportation and motor vehicles. It reduces fraud by preventing issuance of multiple driver's licenses to the same individual.
• Retail. For customers that already have video management software (VMS) and surveillance at their locations, NEC integrates its packages with leading VMS providers. This gives it a foothold in airports, malls, and other public areas already served by VMS.
• Authentication. The novel scope of implementation in the device authentication segment has helped do away with the traditional one-time password authentication method.

"NEC is also a leading implementer of best practices, which enables its solution to be deployed at all times of the day, in diverse environments. Importantly, it is camera type-, lens-, and position-agnostic," Bhattacharya said. "The company's comprehensive CAPEX and OPEX business models include on-site or remote and cloud support. Its recent announcements of partnerships with leading data center providers possessing mandatory federal security certifications for data hosting give it an additional edge in the hosted market."

Overall, NEC's superior knowledge of the environments in which the facial recognition applications are used, and its implementation of best practices, comprehensive purchase models, price-performance value, and customer purchase and support experience make it a leading brand in the North American market.

"NEC is very pleased to be awarded such a high-profile honor," said Raffie Beroukhim, senior vice president of NEC's Biometrics Solutions Division. "The award validates the visionary innovation of our NeoFace facial recognition portfolio and solutions, in addition to the impact and value it has brought to our government and public sector clients. Furthermore, the Company of the Year Award from Frost & Sullivan recognizes the team that worked hard to deliver consistently accurate and extraordinary solutions, making NEC a prime vendor of choice in government and enterprise markets."

Each year, Frost & Sullivan presents this award to a company that has demonstrated superiority in devising a strong growth strategy and implementing it. The recipient has shown strength in terms of innovation in products and technologies, leadership in customer value, as well as speed in response to market needs. In short, the award looks at the Industry participants and recognizes the best practices that position them for growth.

Frost & Sullivan Best Practices awards recognize companies in a variety of regional and global markets for demonstrating outstanding achievement and superior performance in areas such as leadership, technological innovation, customer service, and strategic product development. Industry analysts compare market participants and measure performance through in-depth interviews, analysis, and extensive secondary research to identify best practices in the industry.

About NEC Corporation of America (NEC)

NEC Corporation of America (NEC) is a leading technology integrator providing solutions that improve the way people work and communicate. NEC delivers integrated Solutions for Society that are aligned with our customers' priorities to create new value for people, businesses and society, with a special focus on safety, security and efficiency.  We deliver one of the industry's strongest and most innovative portfolios of communications, analytics, security, biometrics and technology solutions that unleash customers' productivity potential. Through these solutions, NEC combines its best-in-class solutions and technology, and leverages a robust partner ecosystem to solve today's most complex business problems. NEC Corporation of America is a wholly-owned subsidiary of NEC Corporation, a global technology leader with a presence in 160 countries and $25 billion in revenues. For more information, please visit www.necam.com

About Frost & Sullivan

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