Sun offers global architectural blueprint to help e-commerce customers with Internet banking strategies

As e-commerce knows no traditional boundaries, Sun Microsystems' public key infrastructure (PKI) environment is available globally to customers through the iForce Ready Centre in California. This latest move sees Sun Microsystems' PKI environment supporting the global Identrus model for trusted business-to-business Internet commerce.

In addition to offering customers easy access to solutions, quick environment settings and development, the iForce Ready Center in California offers them an architectural blueprint to see how Identrus compliant technology would be implemented at their own site.

Stefano Mattiello, managing director of Sun Microsystems SA, says it's important that the PKI environment is accessible to customers around the world.

"All facilities within Sun, regardless of where they are, are available to all our customers, regardless of their location.

"We are actively doing more and more to break down geographical barriers and focusing on business lines rather than political lines or regions. E-commerce knows no traditional boundaries, so in essence Sun no longer considers SA or any other country as a separate entity, we work with customers not countries," says Mattiello.

"With the availability of the Identrus solution at the iForce Ready Center, Sun continues to emphasise the value of partnering with our customers on their important corporate Internet banking strategies," said David Littlewood, director of Worldwide Financial Services for Sun Microsystems.

"Sun hardware provides a robust, scalable, and available infrastructure for financial institutions looking to bring trusted and secure e-commerce to their customers worldwide. The pairing of Sun products and iPlanet products enables organisations to deploy these services rapidly and with the assurance that they will meet their business needs."

Sun and the Sun-Netscape alliance, iPlanet, have developed an Identrus testing environment to allow companies to build a customised, demonstrable proof-of-concept of the technology supporting the Identrus Four Corner Transactional Model PKI environment without incurring the cost and risk associated with testing new technology in-house.

At the iForce Ready Center, a project team composed of Sun experts, independent software vendors (ISVs), and system integrators (SIs) collaborates with the customer to test for integration and interoperability of applications running on the Identrus architecture.

The iForce Ready Centers build solutions on Sun Servers running the Solaris Operating environment and use Sun's SunConnect architecture based on the principle of open system application program interfaces (APIs).

The technology components of Sun's Identrus solution include the iPlanet Trustbase Transaction Manager, along with additional iPlanet products and software products from other ISV partners. The addition of the iPlanet Trustbase Transaction Manager layer on top of the identity check service enables the Identrus community to add value to their services though messaging support, transaction signing and routing, support for diverse transport service layers, authorisation, logging and billing functions.

"By working with our customers to select and test the interoperability of best-of-breed products, Sun's iForce experts enable organisations to deliver expanded services over the Web quickly and confidently," said Raj Dosaj, director of Global iForce Ready Centers for Sun Microsystems.

"The Identrus testing model in our Menlo Park, California centre is one example of the many innovative technologies demonstrated in iForce Ready Centers around the world."

The iForce Ready Centers, located in Tokyo, Paris, and Menlo Park, California, assist Sun customers across all industries with everything from brainstorming the options for creating technological infrastructures, to quick proof-of-concept implementation, to actual pilot programs.