GlobalPlatform Announces New Card Committee Chair
18 August 2005: GlobalPlatform announces that its Board of Directors has elected Klaus Gungl, Senior Smart Card Systems Architect at IBM Global Services, to the position of Chairman for the organization’s Card Committee. The appointment takes place with immediate effect.
Klaus Gungl brings to this position his extensive knowledge and commitment to the smart card industry with over twenty years of experience designing and implementing embedded microcontroller systems. He has been an integral member of the Card Committee since its inception in 1999 and served as Vice-Chair of the Card Committee for the past two years.
Gungl’s additional GlobalPlatform accolades include his active leadership of the Card Compliance Working Group and the Public Key Infrastructure task-force for the impending GlobalPlatform Card Specification v2.2.
The new GlobalPlatform Card Committee Chair succeeds Marc Kekicheff, Vice President Product Technology at Visa Worldwide Services, who remains in the role of GlobalPlatform’s Technical Director. Kekicheff has stepped down from his role as Chair of the GlobalPlatform Card Committee after five years, to pursue further responsibilities within Visa and to allow other interested Members to serve the organization.
Jean-Loup Depinay, XXX at Oberthur Card Systems, will act as Vice-Chair of the GlobalPlatform Card Committee and Marc Kekicheff will remain very active in the Card Committee until the end of this year to help ensure a smooth transition.
GlobalPlatform is a fully independent, democratic organization with over fifty cross-industry member organizations that aims to establish, maintain and drive adoption of standards to enable an open and interoperable infrastructure for smart cards, devices and systems. The primary purpose of the GlobalPlatform Card Committee is to define an industry neutral and technology neutral standard for card and application management on smart cards.
Bob Beer, Vice President of Business Development at Datacard Group and Chair of GlobalPlatform, comments: “We welcome Klaus as the new Chair of the GlobalPlatform Card Committee. The Board is confident that his industry experience, combined with his enthusiasm for the role, makes Klaus the perfect candidate for this position. We look forward to working with him closely and enjoying the benefits of his future contributions to the organization.
“I would also like to acknowledge the tremendous efforts of former Card Committee Chair, Marc Kekicheff. Mark has worked tirelessly throughout the past five years to progress the work of GlobalPlatform and cement its role as the global leader in smart card infrastructure development.”
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Notes to Editors:
GlobalPlatform
Driven by over 50 cross-industry member organizations, GlobalPlatform is the leading, international association, focused on establishing and maintaining interoperable specifications for single and multi-application smart cards, acceptance devices and systems infrastructure that deliver benefits to issuers, service providers and technology suppliers.
These specifications are known as the standard for smart card infrastructure, thanks to their balance of technical superiority and business justification.
GlobalPlatform specifications are available royalty-free and have been adopted in Europe, North America, Asia and Australia by many public and private bodies. Currently, there are over 25 GlobalPlatform-based smart card implementations world-wide and approximately 70 million GlobalPlatform cards are in global circulation.
GlobalPlatform is an independent, not-for-profit organization and its strategy is defined and prioritized by a Board of Directors. GlobalPlatform is currently chaired by Chairman Robert E. Beer, Vice President Business Development, Datacard Group. www.globalplatform.org
