GLI in Asia
The company is looking to build its business in the region
In December 2008 GLI announced what it described as the first-ever fully operational independent testing and interoperability centre in Asia. As well as launching the new 3,000 square foot facility located in China Civil Plaza in Macau, GLI also formed a partnership with a local educational institution– Macao Polytechnic Institute. The GLI Asia Interoperability and Testing Center was officially opened in February 2009, with Larry Xiao as its General Manager. It serves as the company’s regional base to serve markets including Macau, Mainland China, Japan, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan and other emerging Asian gaming and lottery markets.
“A lot of those jurisdictions either have regulators in place, are putting regulation in place, or are moving toward that,” says Christie Eickelman.
Macau operators
“In that sense, we [at GLI] are getting in on the ground floor. In Macau, for example, the operators are very keenly aware that they need secure games. They have too much to lose if the game has not been tested by a recognised testing lab.
“We’re aggressively developing our business in Macau and elsewhere and working to form relationships with regulators. Some jurisdictions are more mature than others. Some have the staff to handle it. If not, we can assist with that as well,” she adds.
“Macau will be our central hub for all of Asia. But even if we’re testing for something in Asia, it can also be tested in any other office in our 13 offices worldwide. We have the same checklist, the same protocols, the same type of engineers—in Australia we have three offices. We have a senior director of engineering in each location to manage the workload.
Leading presence
“We can also move engineers around to get training in whatever type of situation we need to be involved in. For example, we have an engineer from the Las Vegas office who’s currently in Macau. We have the flexibility whereby we have enough engineers so that if we supply one somewhere else, the work doesn’t stop at the lab where the engineer was previously based.
“GLI has been doing this sort of work for 20 years,” states Christie Eickelman.
“The regulators have confidence when they see our investment and see how committed we are to the markets we’re in. It’s pretty easy to put up information about a test lab on a Website and say ‘We’re a test lab’. The proof of a testing company’s commitment is when a regulator makes a lab visit and sees all the equipment, effort and experience that we at GLI can offer the market. That’s the difference that really counts.
