• Electrosoft scoops a SABS Prototype Award
  
• IT experts in the making while a dream comes true
  
• Expertron clinches another deal
  
• National Forum for Incubators on the cards
  
• CoachLab helps students to fast track skills development
  
• Hub interacts with young entrepreneurs
  
• Visitors to the Hub
• Hub Progress Sheet
• Infrastructure development milestones

Expertron clinches another deal

Expertron, the pioneer start-up company in The Innovation Hub's Incubation Programme, has clinched a deal with an established ERP.com company to become the sole distributors of its innovative new information security solution product, Cell-IDŽ.

Gavin Ehlers (left) and Wynand Jordaan (right) demonstrating Expertron's information security solutions product, Cell-ID, to Dr Neville Comins, CEO of The Innovation Hub.

Cell-IDŽ is a strong user authentication system that provides users of Internet services with additional security when they log on to electronic services, by using their cell phones as the equivalent of an identity document to prove their identity. Developed by Dr Walter Smuts and Mr Gavin Ehlers, both former engineering lecturers at the University of Pretoria, Cell-IDŽ is a cost-effective, practical and easily deployable product that could change the nature of access to electronic services.

SecureData, part of the ERP.com group of companies and distributor of Cell-IDŽ, is a company that distributes, sells and supports category-leading IT security products to the public, corporate and SME sectors throughout Africa as well as products and services to the SOHO and consumer markets through partnerships with Internet Service Providers.

"Cell-ID is the only secure token-based user authentication system that uses a familiar technology - a cell phone - as an authentication token," says Jan Coetzee, a director at SecureData. "This means that Cell-ID is simple to use, easy to roll out and very affordable."

For Expertron this vote of confidence from SecureData is the second major breakthrough in the past two months. In July communications giant Grintek Telekom announced a partnership with Expertron in terms of which Grintek bought a 30% shareholding in Expertron, which still allows the small ICT company to keep its identity.

The Innovation Hub's incubation programme is one of the initiatives that were instituted to realise the objective of encouraging and supporting a knowledge-intensive industry growth in South Africa. Expertron joined the pilot business incubator at The Innovation Hub as its pioneer start-up shortly after the Hub started operating in pilot mode in 2001.

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