5003-054575 01.07.98 - 31.12.99

Project leader: Prof. André Schiper, Lab. de systèmes d‘exploitation, Dép. d‘Informatique, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology at Lausanne (EPFL)
e-mail: andre.schiper@di.epfl.ch

Name of project: MERCURIO - a secure and reliable service platform for electronic commerce

Partners:
Marc Zweiacker, Swisscom Corporate Technology, Bern
Dr. Karsten Decker, PD., Centro svizzero di calcolo scientifico, Manno
Cyril Arnold, CB Service, Lausanne

Funding: Sfr 300,038.-

Summary:
This project develops security functions of particular relevance and necessity to electronic commerce, especially technical processes to ensure legally binding engagements. The core idea is to bring together the concept of middleware in telecommunications service platforms and the requirements of electronic commerce in order to achieve the cost-effective introduction and acceptance of electronic commerce. The project is based on the following assumptions:

• Electronic commerce is a business area which will be largely covered by established telecom service providers.
• Electronic commerce makes strictest requirements on the security and reliability of the services used. These are not limited to the traditional areas of confidentiality, integrity and availability despite disruptions, but also take in areas such as legal engagement.
• Security, reliability and legal engagement cannot be guaranteed by specific application to an individual electronic commerce service. Rather, a general functionality must be built into the underlying infrastructure of these services. The most appropriate location for such a functionality in current architectures is the middleware layer.

The most popular approach to middleware today is a combination of Web technology, Java applets and CORBA (Common Object Request Broker Architecture). The present project develops a platform which satisfies the requirements of security, reliability and legal engagement for electronic commerce and which is intended to serve as the basis for the provision of an electronic commerce service by a telecom operator. This platform can, however, also be used on Internet hosts of electronic commerce vendors. Its use in practice will be demonstrated by the implementation of an online translation service.

Cooperation: Laboratoire de systèmes d’exploitation, EPFL; Swisscom, Bern; CSCS; CB Service, Lausanne (translation company).