The second generation of digital commerce solutions

Since early 1995, when the invocation of the World Wide Web (WWW) first triggered mass adoption of the Internet for public access to digital communications and exchanges across the globe, purveyors of a safe and sound technology infrastructure have scrambled to offer the "ultimate" solution for digital commerce. To get the mass market on the Web, the reasoning went, a special security infrastructure would need to be put into place - transforming the wild-and-wooly Internet into a network with end-to-end protections. Many different approaches to this quest have been taken in the ensuing four years, but none have emerged as a clear front-runner for widespread implementation and market dominance. Now, as eCommerce is booming and the 'Net is revolutionizing industry after industry, it is obvious that the world did not wait for a specialized technology infrastructure after all, and eBusiness is clearly mushrooming off what was already in place. And it is becoming clearer with each passing day that a new generation of digital commerce solutions is beginning to emerge, with new priorities (e.g., privacy) and higher value-added requirements (e.g., smartcard integration, biometrics, etc.). Sorting out the winners and losers in this second generation will be harder still, since one of the prerequisites is that all the technology will ultimately become transparent to the user! (C) 2000 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.