Motorola Launches Flexible Multi-Application Smart Card System - Product Announcement

Edge: Work-Group Computing Report, May 8, 2000

Motorola (NYSE:MOT) announced Tuesday the Motorola M-Smart Exchange Software Platform for smart card applications. Flexible, modular and scalable, the M-Smart system integrates application modules, intelligent network content and intelligent network edge devices to deliver card and application management, operations, help desk, secure Web server access, authorization/settlement, transaction reporting and other back-office and network functions required to implement a multi-application smart card solution. The system architecture defines Application Programming Interfaces (API's) that enable the M-Smart system to integrate other applications, existing databases and legacy systems. The M-Smart system can speed time-to-market and reduce development complexity and cost, especially when compared to doing a custom development for a project.

The M-Smart system targets a variety of smart card applications, including intelligent access control and identification for corporate or university campuses, network security, stored value, credit/debit and loyalty programs as examples. The system supports multiple card issuers and multiple applications, and can provide a central settlement and clearing function. This enables business alliances to provide services to large populations of common customers each of which use a single smart card for all transactions.

Designed for the new Internet economy, the system can be used with other existing application servers, such as a PKI certificate authority (CA) system, through the Web server interface and secure access capabilities. Its communications and device management module can manage intelligent network edge devices typical in smart card systems, such as secure dial in servers, telecom application servers or the credit card-accepting POS terminals typically found in payment applications. The system architecture uses API's for interfacing into legacy systems or databases, which is a common requirement when companies upgrade their operations to include smart card technology. The M-Smart System can be integrated completely as a turnkey implementation, or customized for specific requirements.

"From the outset, we had the vision of a total multi-application smart card solution, and you can't say `total solution' without thinking about the back-office systems to operate and manage transactions, devices, customer service, and reporting," said Francois Dutray, Motorola's vice president and general manager, Worldwide Smartcard Solutions Division. "We combined Motorola's experience as one of the world's largest system integrators with our application-specific knowledge to create a system that addresses the unique challenges of multi-application smart cards, like application management and authentication."

The M-Smart system adds system capabilities to a long list of recently announced industry leading new products introduced by Motorola that focus on enabling multi-application solutions. They include four new M-Smart card platforms: M-Smart Venus MV5000 and MV5100, second generation dual interface contacted/contactless cards that deliver 50% faster transactions and unite Proton with transit applications; M-Smart Mercury MM4000L, a cost-effective contactless solution offering sub-100 millisecond transactions; and M-Smart Jupiter MJ1000C, the first 32-bit card to support Java Card 2.1 technology and Visa Open Platform 2.0. Motorola also has announced a series of impressive total solution system wins stretching from China to San Francisco.

As part of its total solutions strategy, Motorola also provides consulting, systems integration, application development, implementation, operations and maintenance services for systems. With a systems integration business of over $4 billion per year, Motorola has won smart cards systems contracts from China to Washington DC because of its total system approach and global presence. The new Motorola back office system supports the M-Smart Mercury, Venus, and Jupiter families of smart cards through its common API. This interface allows all Motorola card platforms to interoperate seamlessly within the system, so system operators can offer a range of services optimized for different parts of their market.

To understand how this system would be used, say a large corporate campus with several thousand employees wanted to add internal and remote network security and cafeteria payment to their building access and identity card. They would use the M-Smart system to keep track of who had cards and what applications were on the card, such as network security. They could issue new cards and replace lost cards, making sure they cancelled the old cards. The system might also allow payment at the cafeteria, and make sure individuals were charged correctly for additions to their cafeteria "purse," and also that the food service provider is paid correctly. All of these operations are transparent to the cardholder, but it is the M-Smart system that makes it all work together. While this example is limited in scale, the M-Smart system itself is designed to support much more complex environments where hundreds of thousands of cardholders conduct hundreds of millions of transactions annually with many service providers.