Baltimore's death spells gloom for PKI

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• PKI,
• Baltimore

Matt Loney ZDNet.co.uk

Published: 28 Nov 2003 13:45 GMT

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Although wide use of certificates for e-commerce has failed to materialise, some companies are using them internally, where a server in the datacentre can issue the certificates and HR departments can be trusted to authenticate users.

James Governor, principal analyst at RedMonk, aggress that PKI has on the whole failed to happen. "Waiting for PKI to take off is like waiting for Godot," he said. "A lot of people can see why it is useful for e-commerce but we haven't seen it happen. A lot of people tried to push for top down but it hasn't worked."

Baltimore's mistake, said Governor, was to bet the house on PKI. "It is also difficult to sell a portfolio that has a lot of different pieces related by a theme, and you're trying to tie them together," said Governor, referring to Baltimore's attempt a year ago to package up its PKI technologies.

BeTrusted, the company formed by PricewaterhouseCoopers, which in September placed a bid for Balimtore's PKI business, is predictably more upbeat about the technology. The company offered £5m cash in the hope of acquiring as customers the 300 companies that use Baltimore's UniCert technology. "Over 75 percent of our clients have made significant investments in Baltimore's PKI suite, which we have implemented and operated for many years," said John Garvey, chief executive of beTRUSTed, at the time. "We understand the importance of UniCert as a critical global infrastructure product and we commit to continue unchanged Baltimore’s high-level of support and development."

The consensus seems to be that PKI does have a future, but it's just not here yet. Bijan Khezri, who was chief executive of Baltimore before the EGM but who was due to become executive chairman after the meeting, said: "The long-term competitiveness of the PKI business requires critical mass."

Sadly, Baltimore won't be around to see it happen. Following the completion of the proposed disposal, the company's assets will consist primarily of cash currently held, proceeds from the disposal and the hardware and software support business. In a statement, Baltimore said it intends to sell this residual business "shortly". Thereafter, it said, it will seek to ensure that shareholder value is maximised by pursuing one of a number of options available to it: "These options include returning cash to the shareholders, making a new acquisition or being involved in a reverse takeover."

"It's sad," said Governor. "It would have been nice to have a somewhat dominant security company coming out of our geography. We all got a bit carried away saying great, here's a European company that will make a difference, but it didn't happen."

Graham Titterington said: "Today is really a formality. For the industry and IT world Baltimore died when it began selling off its technologies."

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