A Burnaby information-technology company hopes two contracts with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) will help it crack the code on many future deals with large American law enforcement agencies.

Visiphor Corp.'s two contracts, both pilot projects, are worth $630,000 US with DHS. Under the terms of the deals, Visiphor streamlines information transfers between the 22 organizations that comprise DHS, so that they can share so-called disparate data easily. The company recently announced that DHS has approved the technology for expanded use within the U.S. government.

"We're on the doorstep now of what I think are some pretty good things and big opportunities with (DHS)," says Visiphor president and CEO Roy Trivett. "There's huge will and need for them to get integrated use of disparate data."

Visiphor won out over big players such as International Business Machines Corp. (IBM) and Computer Associates.

Bayne Stanley, Business Edge
Visiphor president Roy Trivett took Washington by storm when U.S. officials had a look at his company's technological expertise.

Trivett says his public com-pany prevailed because its data-sharing technology allows investigators to seek, find and get information all in one package, whereas rival vendors had a strategy that required users to find the data and then use another way to get it.

For example, an investigator who wants information on a suspect can simply log into one system and ask several different data sources the same question at the same time - and get answers back right away through a graphic user interface that looks and acts like a website. DHS investigators can also access the system using different types of hardware - for example, a Macintosh or an IBM-compatible personal computer - and software.

"Believe it or not, there's still people within the U.S. gov-ernment using (Microsoft) Windows 95," says Trivett in his 23rd-floor office in Metrotower 1 in the Metrotown district. But law enforcement agencies can still restrict the data to certain users, depending on their security clearance, and limit how much information they want to share.

As part of its second deal with DHS, Visiphor is increasing accessibility to, and streamlining, border-control data.

Visiphor infiltrated DHS's procurement system about a week after hooking up with Washington, D.C.-based lobbyist David Olive, principal in Olive, Edwards & Brinkmann LLC. The Hill, a newspaper that reports on U.S. Congress, lists the firm as a top DHS lobby group.

Olive is a former chief of staff to former congressman Asa Hutchinson.

Through Olive, Visiphor met first with U.S. Customs and Border Protection officials and then attended monthly roundtable luncheons involving DHS officials and suppliers.

DHS technical experts were initially "very skeptical" about Visiphor's claims of what it could do, and openly doubted Trivett and other Visiphor executives during a product-demonstration session.

But, says Trivett, the most skeptical DHS expert proclaimed his support for the technology by the end of the same meeting.

Trivett says the company now has several potential new deals in the works with DHS, the second-largest government organization next to the U.S. military.

The two existing contracts are for demonstration projects that, if successful, will position Visiphor to be the lead vendor on any new initiatives requiring data-sharing technology.

"We are being asked on an almost-daily basis, based on the success we've had, to quote on business opportunities within the (DHS)," says Trivett, adding word is getting around the U.S. capital about the firm.

Visiphor hopes to gain new deals related to the DHS's recently announced secure border initiative (SBI), which is seeking new disparate-data technology to keep out unwanted immigrants, and the United States visitor and immigrant status indicator technology (US-VISIT) program, which monitors recent arrivals.

"DHS will field the most effective mix of current and next-generation technology with trained personnel," says a DHS news release on the SBI program.

"Our goal is to ultimately have the capacity to integrate multiple state-of-the art cameras and sensors into a single comprehensive detection system and expand infrastructure systems throughout the border where appropriate to strengthen our efforts to reduce illegal entry."

The US-VISIT program uses scanning equipment to gather "biometric identifiers," such as inkless fingerprints, along with digital photographs of visitors. The system verifies a visitor's identity and compliance with visa and immigration policies.

Founded in 2003, Visiphor evolved from two predecessors, Images Technologies and Briyante Software Corp.

Images was trying to peddle facial-recognition software for law enforcement agencies, "but you couldn't make a business out of it," says Trivett, a former Images investor. Briyante was a data-sharing firm (Visiphor now uses Briyante's data-sharing technology).

Before landing the DHS deals, Visiphor provided data-sharing technology to several RCMP detachments, the B.C. government, police and sheriff departments in King County in Washington state, and other law enforcement agencies.

"We had been having great success in the local law enforcement level, within the county and city level," says Trivett.

Visiphor's board has some heavy law enforcement hitters. Director Norman Inkster is a former commissioner of the Canadian RCMP, while chairman Oliver (Buck) Revell served as deputy director of the FBI and director Clyde Farnsworth was a director with the U.S. Federal Reserve.

However, the disparate-data problem goes beyond law enforcement and security, says Trivett.

There are huge opportunities in health care and financial services, but Visiphor does not have any expertise in those areas.

As a result, subject to financing, the company has acquired private Vancouver-based Sunaptic Solutions Inc. for $3.2 million.

Under the terms of the deal that was slated to close Nov. 18, Visiphor agreed to pay $2.7 million - the equivalent of Sunaptic's annual revenues - in cash and $500,000 in shares.

"Getting the Sunaptic piece into play gives us rapid entry into the health-care and financial-services verticals, so we see being able to go forward in the next year and improve our sales forecast from an original $10-million number to $15 million and then maybe higher than that," says Trivett.

"We see that it will get us into the new marketplaces. It will expand the focused professional-services component of our business against which you tend to get steadier revenue streams.

"So it will give us a steady base and higher visibility into our forecasts, which are all good things when you're managing a company in the public markets. People like to know what you're going to do and you want to be able to tell them with some certainty."

Sunaptic also has a closer relationship with Microsoft than Visiphor and is plugged into the software manufacturer's future products through a rare gold managed-partner status, says Trivett, an Ottawa native who has lived in Vancouver since 1990.

He is optimistic the current and potential DHS deals and Sunaptic acquisition will eventually make Visiphor more lucrative than another company he co-founded, Architel Systems Corp., based on technology that he designed.

Architel, a a telecommunications firm, reached a market capitalization of $110 million and was sold to Nortel Networks for $600 million.

(Monte Stewart can be reached at monte@businessedge.ca)