Card, mobile credential, payment and security
Mercer University project shows scalability across thousands of readers and mobile credentials
In this episode of CampusIDNews Chats, leaders from Transact + CBORD (rebranding to Illumia in March 2026), Genea, and Mercer University discuss a new partnership delivering cloud-native access control to higher education. The collaboration brings together Genea’s modern physical security solution and Illumia’s identity, credentialing, and commerce platform. Mercer is a key initial implementation of the new partnership.
Michael Wong, President and CEO of Genea, describes his company’s offering as a smart building automation platform with a physical security solution built natively in the cloud. He explains that many cloud-hosted access systems are simply retrofits of a company’s legacy offering, but Genea’s solution is designed natively for the cloud, enabling scalability and continuous innovation.
We're big believers in open hardware. Our customer retention is driven by our service and our value, not because we sold you something proprietary.
He highlights Genea’s commitment to open architecture, allowing institutions to reuse hardware and avoid proprietary lock-in. They prioritize user experience – from a modern intuitive user interface to dedicated project management during implementation. Rather than leaving customer support to integrators or OEMs, Genea handles its own 24x7x365 support enhanced by AI-driven tools.
Rasheed Behrooznia, EVP and General Manager for Campus ID and Commerce at Illumia, says one key to the partnership is a shared philosophy. He points to a focus on client satisfaction, resiliency, and scalable cloud technology.
“Leading up to selecting Genea as a partner we were exploring options to bring cloud-native access control to our ecosystem and frankly, all of higher education,” says Behrooznia. “We were looking for that partner that had exceptional solutions that operated at scale.”
For Mercer University, the move to Genea followed decades using an on-prem access control system. With nearly 4,000 readers across 12 facilities in Georgia and 14,000 mobile credentials in use, scalability and uptime were critical.
We wanted to use and be able to reuse as much of the existing Transact access control readers, the physical wiring, and infrastructure that we had in place.
Associate Vice President Ken Boyer says cloud was a must-have, as was open architecture, and the ability to reuse existing infrastructure. The university spread funding across three fiscal years to ease the financial impact.
“The vast majority of our stakeholders that are out using their credentials on our campuses each and every day see no difference,” says Boyer. “It just works. It just keeps working.”
Wong describes Mercer as a valuable proving ground. “We will do whatever it takes to solve the problems that need to be solved,” he says, noting the complexity of university environments and the importance of reliability.
Boyer adds that the partnership has improved campus operations and fostered collaborative product development. “Access control is our primary focus,” he says, “but we're looking down the road to integrate video, building systems, and other things that Genea brings to the table.”
To listen to the full discussion, click on the image at the top of this page.
TRANSCRIPT
Welcome to CampusIDNews Chats. I'm your host Chris Corum. Today we're going to talk about a partnership between Illumia and security provider Genea that's bringing the next evolution of cloud-based access control to Transact clients. We're going to hear from Mercer University, one of the first institutions to put that solution into play.
With me today, we've got Ken Boyer, Associate Vice President for Auxiliary Services at Mercer. Ken is well known to lots of us for his pioneering work in the industry, including being one of the first campuses to go fully mobile.
Rasheed Behrooznia, EVP and General Manager for Campus ID and Commerce at Illumia, which most of us know as formerly Transact + CBORD.
And third, Michael Wong, President and CEO of Genea.
Michael, we're going to let you kick it off. Can you give us an overview of Genea and your solutions?
Michael Wong: So Genea overall is a smart building automation platform, but what we'll focus our attention on specifically is our physical security solution, which we acquired in December of 2019.
That solution is an application that was natively built in the cloud, as opposed to a lot of the solutions that are out there that are purported cloud solutions, but it's basically a forklifted version of their on-prem software with all the same limitations. So be careful out there. Not all clouds built the same.
The other thing that really distinguishes us from the industry is we're big believers in open hardware, so that our customer retention is driven by our service and our value, not because we sold you something proprietary.
We help future proof the buying decision of hardware by using something that, if you don't like us for some reason, there's at least 20 other software providers that you can use that same hardware for that end user.
Then I would say most importantly, the other thing that we focus on is a fantastic end user experience.
You'll see a old legacy access control platform that feels like you're going back in time decades, or you could see that against our modern user interface, that just looks like something that's intuitive. The user experience is just a lot more improved using our platform.
But the user interface isn't just the UI.
We actually take it back all the way to the implementation process, because we are the only company that, as far as I know, assigns a project manager to make sure everything goes smoothly. That project manager gets very involved in the database migration, the entire implementation process, because you only get one time to make a good first impression. Obviously, we want to make sure that things go well.
Then ongoing support, we provide 24-7-365 ongoing support. If somebody has any problems, they're not having to go to a security integrator, and then that ticket needs to go to the OEM, and you're waiting hours, days, maybe weeks to get an answer back.
We're talking about physical security, this stuff needs to be resolved right away. On our platform is a chat bot where you can interact and ask questions. A majority of our tickets are actually resolved with our AI in the bot right now, turning to the appropriate help articles. But at any point in time, if you want to talk to a live agent, you have a live agent, once again, 24x7x365.
Those are some of the things we bring in the marketplace that are different.
Chris Corum: Rasheed, can you describe a bit more about the partnership? What's that bringing to Illumia clients? How is it helping what you're looking to do in that next evolution of access control?
Rasheed Behrooznia: Yeah, absolutely, Chris. I guess my first immediate answer is Genea shared much of the same beliefs that we do here at Illumia. Mainly an unwavering focus on client satisfaction and bringing those exceptional solutions to market.
Leading up to selecting Genea as a partner we were exploring what options there were to bring cloud-native access control to our ecosystem and frankly, all of higher education. We were looking for that partner that had exceptional solutions that operated at scale. A company like us that was focused on cloud-native technology and all that comes with that, the security and resiliency that's necessary to ensure that high satisfaction.
In addition to that technical acumen, as I said, just a partner that would be dedicated to our clients and dedicated to working with us to bring that great experience to market in higher education. That was non-negotiable and Genea really met that mark.
I would say one of the things that was a very important factor as well is Genea can work with a number of our solutions, whether that was our TSE solution, IDX, leveraging our access control integration layer to immediately be able to work with our solutions, that provision credentials across mobile and the architecture that we have.
And ultimately, just a partnership that is about giving our colleges and university choice, flexibility, a modern security foundation, and open architecture for that exceptional user experience.
So in the end, we found that exceptional partner.
Chris Corum: Ken, so Mercer is one of the first institutions to launch this partnership and the Genea solution. Can you tell us about the prior PACS environment that you had on your campus and how that led you to seek a new solution? What you were looking for?
Ken Boyer: We were on-premise with Transact for over 30 years, and that product had worked well for us. As that product was sunsetting with Transact, we started looking at other opportunities that they had, partners that they could offer to us. Genea became a clear leader in our evaluation process.
We were an early adopter, as you said earlier, with mobile credentials. We've done a lot of things with the cloud with Transact, and this just made sense for us.
Having an on-prem server solution was difficult for us because we're a 24-7 operation. You've got downtime, things like that. Moving to the cloud allows us a lot of those updates and things to happen without having to have downtime for our university.
We operate over 12 facilities across the state of Georgia, from the southern end of Georgia to the northern end of Georgia, and it was important for us to have something that could do that.
We have nearly 4,000 access control readers across all of our facilities in the state of Georgia, and right at 14,000 mobile credentials currently in use across our campuses.
Chris Corum: When you were looking for the new solution, what were the must-haves?
Ken Boyer: We were looking for a solution with open architecture. We wanted to use and be able to reuse as much of our existing Transact access control readers that we had on campus, the physical wiring, and infrastructure that we had in place. We were looking to try to do that as much as possible, and look at different options that had it out there.
The Mercury boards were really appealing to us because of the open architecture, and that was something that Transact and Genea can bring to us.
Cloud was a must-have because we had been very successful with other Transact products in the cloud, Transact point of sale was one of the first endeavor into the cloud, and it just made sense to move our access control system in that direction.
Chris Corum: Elephant in the room that always comes up in these kinds of conversations of funding, obstacles, how did you navigate them, how'd the process go?
Ken Boyer: That is always a challenge when you're trying to do something like this.
We had great partners with Transact, and we worked with our account executives at Transact at the time and Genea to try to think outside of the box and not have to do this all in one physical year. We actually spread ours across three physical years, and it's helped us to get it all there and make it happen. So, it's been a great partnership.
We were able to use a lot of our resources that we already had in place, but we had money in our budgets, so we were able to take money from three budget years. Our budget year runs July 1 to June 30th every year. So at the end of FY24 at the time, we were able to use money that we'd been saving.
We knew the sunsetting was coming to the Transact traditional door access system, so we were saving some funds to put towards that and then just got creative to be able to have those funds rolled across three years so that it was not as huge a financial impact to the institution.
Chris Corum: Okay, and initial feedback from your group, from stakeholders on campus, has it gone well?
Ken Boyer: The vast majority of our stakeholders – and students and the faculty and staff that are out using their credentials on our campuses each and every day – see no difference. It just works. It just keeps working.
Working with Michael's team, the team at Transact, and my staff here, we've implemented a process to just roll it to where things keep operating. So that has been very, very good for us.
On the administrative side of the shop there, we've been using new features and new techniques that are available in the Genea software. One which has been huge for us is the AI support that is in the Genea support and that's something that our team really loves. It gets answers to questions quickly without having to get a support tech on the phone necessarily, but they're always there to help us when we need it. So that's been huge.
We're also looking forward to working with Michael's team for other integrations.
Access control is our primary focus here, but we're looking down the road to integrate that to video, building systems, and other things that Genea brings to the table as well, which was one of the reasons that we selected them as a partner.
Chris Corum: Michael, back to you. What did you learn in the process? This was a big project and a little bit of a new market for you guys. What did the Mercer project bring to the table for you?
Michael Wong: I love stress testing our business, our technology with new challenges and Mercer definitely lived up to a new challenge for us.
Universities are not simple organizations to run. There's lots of different parts of the organizations, a lot of different profiles that we need to account for and so I think it put our team to the test.
Now what Rasheed leaned into is one of the most important things for us is to make sure that the end users are happy. I would say we did a lot of bending over backward late nights to make sure that we delivered what we needed to deliver because on a university campus somebody can't get in the door, you know, that's not a good time for anybody, right?
So the realities of making sure that we deliver something that is on time and working reliably is incredibly important for us.
I would say we learned a lot. We leaned into what makes our reputation stand out for other end users is that we will do whatever it takes to solve the problems that need to be solved.
It's also been fun, you know, leaning with the team to hear what other items would you like to see and then start developing those items. One of the nicest things about being natively born in the cloud is we can launch new features very quickly. In fact, last year alone we launched close to 80 new features whereas a typical access control platform may launch a new feature every 12 to 18 months.
Just being able to bring new innovative solutions to Ken and his team by just listening to them. What are things that you'd like to see and if there's an integration that we haven't built yet, we'll put it on the roadmap and we'll give you a timeline in which we will deliver it.
It's been a lot of fun.
Chris Corum: Ken, tell us why you would recommend other peer institutions, other campuses consider this route?
Ken Boyer: I think Michael hit on it right there. They've been listening to their customers. We all agree that it's been a challenging opportunity for everyone. We have all learned the strengths and challenges of each other and together we've had a willingness to sit down and improve the product.
The campus experience has greatly improved on our campus because of our partnership with Transact and with Genea and the team understands that each campus is different.
There's no two of us to be the same. Michael will continue to learn that as they roll this out to other institutions, but I am confident that they will sit down just like they've done with Mercer and listen to ways to make those campuses better as well.
Together we've found solutions that make some substantial improvements to the daily operations.
Chris Corum: Well, congrats everybody. It sounds like a good project is well underway or done and continuing to grow. Thanks everybody for joining me. And thanks everybody for listening in. As always, if you've got an idea for a future episode of CampusIDNews Chats, shoot me a note.
