Inside Asian Gaming

INSIDE ASIAN GAMING | February 2010 34 JCM Global slot machine about it, but it can’t share that information with the rest of the slot machine network on a casino floor. JCM Global’s new iVIZION™ bill validator has in effect taken the guard dog off the leash and allowed it to patrol not only the ‘front door’ of the slot machine, but also the whole system, warning all the other bill validator ‘guard dogs’ and the back of house management of a threat as it arises. This is because the fourth generationiVIZIONisfarmore thanatraditionalperipheral. It is an intelligent piece of technology in multi-way communication with all of a casino’s slot machines and its slot management system. In addition to being able to learn about new threats to casino security by scanning any media introduced to its billacceptorslot,theiVIZION can share that information across the network. “When we were designing the iVIZION, we had a couple of choices,” says Kunal Mishra, JCM Global’s Director of Product Development. “We could have gone ahead and designed another bill validator for slot machines. We chose instead to design a bill validator for slot machines with the technology to be an application on the network at the same time. It’s a technology that works for today that’s also designed for tomorrow,” he explains. “JCM was the pioneer of bill validators in gaming, and this product really cements our market leadership position. It is a generational leap ahead of anything else available in this market,” asserts Mr Mishra. Network news The concept of “an application on the network” is one worth exploring in more detail. The dynamics of the iVIZION’s technology means that it acts rather like an intelligent anti-virus program— identifying threats and then feeding that information to the central system so that it can be pushed back out to all the other validators on the floor. “Our iVIZION devices today have the ability to communicate to a slot machine and a system at the same time,” states Mr Mishra. “The technology that’s inside the iVIZION allows for the scanning of all the different media that are inserted into the bill validator. That allows us to build a tool that can recognise images.” This, in turn, enables the security technology dynamically to adapt to new threats suchas the increasingly sophisticated bill counterfeiting made possible by digital printing. “One of the challenges is that the bad guys are working just as hard as we are,” says Kunal Mishra. The big push “The technology for bill validation cannot be insular within a box. We’ve had to think long and hard about the fact that while the technology today is ‘in the box’ so to speak, tomorrow the technology’s going to reside within a server as an application on a network. And that’s what I mean when I say iVIZION has been designed to be an application on a network—like an anti-virus program. “As new firmware versions are released, much like an anti-virus program, we put it in immediately.The core of the program resides on a system and is then pushed down to a box. That’s so we can stay up with the latest and greatest technology with iVIZION,”states Mr Mishra. The day after the iVIZION was unveiled at the Global Gaming Expo in Las Vegas, JCM Global announced the Hard Rock Hotel & Casino Las Vegas had selected iVIZION as the exclusive bill validator for its casino floor, displacing a competitor’s product in all 700 slot machines in the existing casino. The The VIZION of the Future JCM Global’s new state of the art bill validator isn’t just an application—it’s a network too A traditional bill validator acts as a kind of guard dog on a slot machine—issuing an electronic growl and barring the way when a damaged or unauthorised bill or ticket is presented. Under that linear system, each bill validator‘guard dog’acts alone. It knows how to spot a threat and tells the JCM Global’s new iVIZION™ bill validator