Entrust paid for the press release, no? That's all that is.
My earlier comments referred to analyst 'reports', which are
always funded, with very few exceptions. See excerpt from Aberdeen Group study below for some of their analysis. Aberdeen's one of the good ones ; )
Verisign will no doubt get the US Postal service business, who at one point considered getting into the business on their own. The stock price difference between Verisign and Entrust corresponds to a big co. trying to react like a nimble, specialized company in a highly volatile industry. Where is Entrust based? Plano, TX! Hmmm. Not too many of my colleagues in the Bay Area would really want to move to Texas (no offense to Texas, it's just too dusty). VeriSign's in Mountain View, just took over SGIs *really nice* ex-hq and is in a position to fill some of the space with former NSCP talent when AOL axe falls. Encryption/security is analogous to the anit-virus sw arena, addressed much better by a smaller company who can accomplish things without 15,000 person-hours of meetings. Entrust, a Northern Telecom (now Nortel with Bay Networks) spin-off is supposed to act as the 'trusted third party' for companies like AT&T, Cisco, Lucent? Uh huh. GTE Cybertrust has the same issues. VeriSign would not trade its position in the industry for anybody right now, believe me. Can you imagine a co. like IBM (who I have a lot of respect for) trying to develop and keep up wth anit-virus programs from within? Yikes! Also, VRSN is plugged-in. Here's a nice exercise for you: cross-reference the members of VRSNs BOD with other co.'s You may be surprised at what you find. You could leave Bidzos out, BYW, since we all know about his connections.
Have fun!
- Jer
Alternative Digital Certificate Service Providers
In addition to VeriSign, there are other choices available to IS decision makers for certification services for digital certificates. These alternatives include: GTE CyberTrust, Thawte Consulting and the United States Postal Service. Of these potential suppliers, only GTE CyberTrust has any field-experience with digital certificates and PKI processing operations, earned from servicing the needs of the first digital certificate system deployed by the United States Government.
Unfortunately, GTE has few customers and no proven services. Moreover, GTE has decided to private-label its solutions instead of directly marketing its services and products. Without market-branded identity and proven solutions, Aberdeen does not believe that GTE can provide IS decision makers a realistic alternative.
The Reality of Building and Managing an Enterprise Public Key Infrastructure
Only a few national governments and less than ten commercial enterprises are trying to deploy and manage their own PKI processing centers at this time. In addition to high entry-costs for configuring, deploying and managing their own PKI processing center, IS decision makers state that the gestation time for deploying an initial pilot is longer than a year.
IS managers attempting to configure, deploy and manage PKI processing systems for the enterprise tell Aberdeen that the up-front investment and delayed time-to-market have already caused harm to their enterprises and careers.
Among Aberdeen's market-research findings with the handful of IS decision makers that are still trying to deploy and manage their own PKI processing centers:
The shortest time for reaching the pilot stage is just over a year from the inception of PKI projects; IS managers building their own PKIs are spending multiple millions of dollars before reaching the
pilot-stage; The highly-skilled expertise needed to build and deploy are difficult to find; PKI product-suppliers are placing their own highly-skilled engineers on-site in order to resuscitate projects; and
Talent available from IS consulting firms is largely incapable of implementing and deploying PKI systems.
AberdeenGroup
Volume 11 / Number 7
May 15, 1998 |
