ELECTRONIC COMMERCE UPDATE

January/February € 1997

CommerceNet Sponsors
EDI-Over-Internet Initiative

CommerceNet (http://www.commerce.net), an industry association for Internet commerce, has sponsored an ongoing initiative to demonstrate and promote the interoperable exchange of EDI (electronic data interchange) data over the Internet. At the RSA Data Security Conference, held in January in San Francisco, five participating EDI vendors in the initiative exchanged digitally-signed data, believed to be the first time that such an event has occurred. The organizations are Actra Business Systems (a Netscape/GEIS company), AT&T, Digital Equipment Corp., Premenos and Sterling Commerce.

VeriSign is providing third-party digital authentication services for many test participants through its Get-rEDI Digital ID Center, a Web-based enrollment site. Authentication, in the form of Digital IDs, verifies the identity of parties in an electronic transaction and ensures the integrity of messages.

The CommerceNet initiative consists of three phases of testing:

• During Phase I, participants successfully demonstrated the exchange of EDI documents over SMTP (Simple Mail Transport Protocol) using MIME (Multi-purpose Internet Mail Extensions). The participating companies completed this phase at the end of 1996.
• Phase II, now underway, covers security with signature and encryption. This includes adding S/MIME (Secure/ Multi-purpose Internet Mail Extensions) encryption and integrity technology. Phase II will also include the use of certificates, both self-issued and from VeriSign.
• In Phase III, the participating companies will test receipt requests and signed and unsigned receipts.

The complete list of initiative participants includes: Actra Business Systems, Atlas Products International, AT&T, CyberPath, DanNet, DEC, EDS, Harbinger, Premenos, Sterling Commerce and U.S. Department of Defense.

"A lack of choice of EDI software vendors has been a major inhibitor of Internet-based EDI to date," said Lincoln Yarbrough, product manager, Actra Business Systems and CommerceNet pilot team leader. "Once the interoperability initiative ends, users will have a choice of EDI software vendors, regardless of the vendor selected by their trading partners."

EDI &emdash; a way to exchange business documents using computer-to-computer communication between different companies &emdash; has historically been used to improve only discrete processes, such as automating the accounts payable function or the funds transfer process. The new focus for EDI, using the Internet for electronic commerce, seeks to bridge the external and internal business processes which will enable companies to improve their productivity beyond what has been possible previously. Companies can now enter orders and purchases; do accounts payable; transfer funds; and link seamlessly to suppliers, distributors, customers, banks and transportation carriers. An open, interactive EDI will allow completion of the entire business transaction point-to-point.