Geneva, 17 September 1999 - Oracle Corporation, the number one choice for e-business, and WISeKey, the World Internet Secure Key organisation, today revealed how their partnership will further the global development of e-commerce.

Possibly the biggest issue in the development of global electronic commerce is that of certification - in other words, of providing digital certificates to prove the identities of the participants in a transaction. Because of the national nature of today's certification authorities, certification becomes particularly complex when transactions cross international borders. On the basis of years of research and development, WISeKey have been working with many leading e-business vendors, such as Swisscom, COFACE, Kompass International and CBL WorldKey, in a global electronic commerce partnership. This has so far allowed interconnection of major e-commerce projects across six countries via their World Trade Centers.

Now, Oracle and WISeKey will participate in an Electronic Commerce Round Table, alongside other leading e-business vendors, such as UBS, PWC and IBM. The Round Table intends to develop a certification framework, using the existing global infrastructure of 300 World Trade Centers to connect major e-commerce projects in both developed and developing countries. Oracle's part will be to provide the technology and expertise to make this certification framework a working reality. The Oracle/WISEeKey Partnership underpins the International Telecommunications Union's Electronic Commerce for Developing Countries (EC-DC) project, and will enable developing and least-developed countries to use existing infrastructure to participate in electronic commerce. This will lower the entry barriers for many countries, help to level the playing field and speed the global development of e-commerce.

"We are proud and excited by this tremendous opportunity to further the global development of the internet. The richest 20% of nations currently have 93% of the world's internet users; for example, South Asia, home to 23% of the world's population, has less than 1% of Internet users", said Alfonso Di Ianni, Oracle EMEA VP of Marketing and Business Development. "Today, top corporations have revenues that total more than the GDP of many nations, which creates an imbalance in global integration. Unchecked, this imbalance could make it virtually impossible for new players to join the global electronic marketplace. By participating with WISeKey in this partnership, Oracle wants to make it as easy as possible for governments, companies and people all around the globe to gain benefit from e-business. Oracle has considerable expertise in providing the robust, scalable technology that will be needed to underpin this kind of global infrastructure, and we're delighted to be playing our part."

"The World-Wide Web took just four years to get to 50 million users - the fastest adoption of any new communications technology," said Malcolm Hutchinson, CEO of WISeKey. "But there is a danger of creating an unbridgeable gap between those who have access to the electronic marketplace and those who don't. Building from our considerable investment in research, working with leading e-business vendors such as Oracle, and exploiting existing World Trade Center infrastructures will enable us to provide a certification framework suitable for global use. We expect to be able to provide over one million certificates within the next two years, and thus ease the entry into the global electronic marketplace of many developing nations".

One of the many unique aspects of WISeKey is the administration of the common global root certificate by the International Secure Electronic Transaction Organization (ISETO). Mr Carlos Moreira, Secretary General of ISETO, said, "Oracle's partnership with WISeKey is an excellent example of how leaders in their respective fields can combine efforts and knowledge to expand E-Commerce in developing countries and to give the opportunity to SMEs to integrate into the E-Economy."

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