Managing Electronic Opportunities

Electronic commerce needs secure transactions and better integration with business processes.

Peter Hofland

With expected annual growth rates of 50 percent, security plays a pivotal role in electronic commerce. Thus, many of the applications you'll see at CeBIT will comply with the emerging Secure Electronic Transaction (SET) 1.0 standard, developed by MasterCard and Visa. But you will also see demonstrations of secure Internet payment infrastructures that act on a national scale, such as Moneybytes, from the German company Telecash.

One way to make transactions more secure is to use digital certificates. The main obstacle standing in the way of wider acceptance and use of digital certificates is not technology problems but differences among the various countries governing their legality. Companies such as KryptoKom, SignCard, and Utimaco will demonstrate digital-signing solutions that comply with the German digital-signature law. Glück & Kanja will launch its Security Suite, which contains a sophisticated certification authority (CA) system, called Enterprise Keyserver, that integrates with Microsoft's Crypto API2.0 and the PGP 5 CryptoEngine.

To bridge the gap that now exists between a company's core busi ness processes running in a standard client/server environment and its Internet commerce applications, HP will present its Changengine architecture. The Changengine product portfolio integrates with Netscape's Directory Server and the Netscape ONE platform. It also includes VeriFone's SET-compliant on-line payment products: vGate, a virtual gateway to a bank's host system; vPOS, a secure payment solution for Web servers; and vWallet, a client-software package for the end user. "Smartcard-based vWallet provides a simple, highly secure, portable solution that will help to build the consumer confidence needed to drive electronic commerce into the mainstream," says Michel Roux, vice president and general manager of Gemplus's Internet Business Division.

Because of the popularity of Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) in big corporations, small- and medium-size enterprises are increasingly asking for solutions that can interface to EDI but are considerably less expensive. The answer is a Web/EDI gateway. Companie s such as EDI-Tie, Seeburger, and What's Up will demonstrate at CeBIT gateway solutions that integrate with Web servers and can gradually move into complete message- and order-handling systems.

Another important product category is on-line shop and kiosk systems. Intershop, for example, will launch version 3.0 of its on-line shopping suite, which now has several new templates and features a series of new Store Design Wizards that facilitate shop layout.

Focusing on on-line services for cities and local administration authorities, Digital's European Applied Research Center (CEC), which is based in Karlsruhe, Germany, will demonstrate the lastest version of its Mercado kiosk system. Mercado brings together kiosk terminals in public sites and virtual kiosks on the Web into one environment. It allows residents to order income tax return forms, register license plates, and book local theater tickets. Says Dr. Lutz Heuser, the CEC's director of strategic technology and applied research, "Mercado brings publ ic adminstration closer to citizens."

At a Glance:

Several exhibitors will preview new on-line shopping and kiosking systems. Check out Intershop's new Intershop 3.0 shopping mall, which has easy-to-use shop-design Wizards.

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Public-Key Infrastructure Market Revenues

Public-Key Infrastructure Market Revenues
	1997	1998	1999	2000	2001
Europe	10	20	60	187	656
U.S.	60	80	150	300	750
Others	5	15	53	166	469
Total	75	115	263	652	1875
Figures are in millions of U.S. dollars. Source: Datamonitor

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Web-Enabled Kiosk System

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