“2011 was a terrific year for GSA”

What were GSA accomplishments in 2011?
2011 was a terrific year for GSA. Our standards are continuing to be deployed globally, clearly setting a distinguishing line of competitive advantage between those implementing GSA standards and those who are not.

For example, In Victoria, Australia, a central monitoring system will connect up to 27,500 devices, and in Ohio, a similar central monitoring system will connect up to 17,500 devices both using GSA standards. The government-run casinos in the Netherlands are embarking on the modernization of systems and the integration of their casino management tools using a Casino Management System solution implemented to use all GSA standards.

In the US, the State of Missouri, state regulators are requiring GSA’s GAT 3.5 standard for every slot supplier operating in the state. In Europe, Italy’s Amministrazione Autonoma dei Monopoli di Stato and SOGEI are requiring GSA’s S2S standard to enable cross ticketing.

What are the company's plans for 2012? What novelties are you preparing?
GSA will continue to expand our membership. We will release updates to our standards in 2012. This will make GSA membership even more important moving forward, because these updates and new standards will be available only to GSA members.

How will be the 2012 for the gaming industry in general? Will it be similar to 2011? Do you think that we will see a growth in the activity?
For GSA, we are forecasting 2012 to be a growth year, both in terms of membership, implementation and adoption. At our Annual Meeting held during G2E 2011, several operators spoke about the benefits of GSA standards to their business, and about how they are now requiring GSA standards as a part of their RFPs. What is encouraging about that for the industry generally is that GSA standards pave the way for incredible innovation that help operators attract and retain players, which, of course, will be good for growth.