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Defining The Business Value Of Technology
April 17, 2000
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Options For Public Key Infrastructure
Baltimore Technologies to help users move between hosted and in-house offerings
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altimore Technologies plc, a leading public-key infrastructure security vendor, revealed in January that it would acquire PKI-hosting company GTE CyberTrust Solutions Inc. for $150 million. The company now says it will take advantage of the multimillion-dollar, secure-hosting facility in Needham Heights, Mass., that it gained with the acquisition to offer its PKI technologies as a hosted service. Under the program, branded UniCert Options, customers will be able to seamlessly migrate from the hosted PKI offerings to in-house implementations, taking advantage of a set of best-practices methodologies and professional services, or go from in-house to hosted offerings, the company says.Fran Rooney, Baltimore Technologies' president and CEO, says it's all about options. "Our customers need choices," he says. "They shouldn't be forced to choose between a product solution or a hosted solution. With the announcement of UniCert Options, they have both." Users can also turn to Baltimore's TrustedWorld partners, such as EDS and PricewaterhouseCoopers, for hosting. Of the company's chief competitors, VeriSign Inc. is focused primarily on delivering PKI security as a hosted offering, while Entrust Technologies Inc. has a strong product-sales model.
The UniCert Options offerings include UniCert CMS, the vendor's policy-driven certificate management system that provides PKI security for E-businesses and enterprises. The UniCert product includes almost 20 optional modules: the certificate authority, registration authority, gateways, archive servers, and time stamp servers.
Companies can buy software licenses for each server module outright, or opt for an outsourced PKI model, in which customers get their own root key and pay a monthly service license fee for having certificates delivered from a service. In the hosted PKI model, customers license all required software modules and then pay Baltimore Technologies (or a partner) a monthly hosting fee that covers the PKI management, facilities management, and consulting and training. Pricing for products and hosting ranges from $70,000 to $250,000.
While some companies still shudder at the thought of outsourcing security, the notion is gaining momentum. "We kept running into CyberTrust in competitive situations, and the two of us always ended up on the customers' short list," says Paddy Holahan, executive VP of marketing for Baltimore Technologies. "They always had to choose between a product or hosting solution. Now that choice is easier."
One analyst says the new offerings will help, but they aren't a security cure-all for companies that want to switch from hosting to insourcing. "It looks good on the surface, but switching from [hosting] to doing PKI internally is about more than software," says Frank Prince, a security analyst for Forrester Research. Companies have to be concerned about setting up staff and establishing help-desk and policy control. "It's much easier to switch from doing it in-house to outsourcing than vice versa,'' he says.
As for the long-range vision, neither Rooney nor Holahan sees any limit. The future of security is ubiquitous, Rooney predicts. "We started with the various components of E-commerce, but the demarcation is going to split," Rooney says, and there's a real opportunity here to provide customers a very flexible solution, and to provide solutions for the devices that are going to explode onto the infrastructure. "TVs, headsets, cell phones, even the Sony PlayStation will be a mechanism for E-commerce in the future," he adds. "All of these devices need different levels of security, and Baltimore plans to be there."
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