Wave Systems Corp. (fka WAVXQ)

[24601]

I think Wave's achievement with the TCG can be summarized this way:

Wave is a services company that has successfully campaigned to have the PC industry establish as a requirement for trusted computing a client-side hardware component that happens to supply the resources necessary for Wave's services.

That's a long sentence, but its elements are simple enough.
Wave is a services company.
It has long tried to get the PC industry to adopt a trusted-client paradigm.
The industry now has begun to establish client-side requirements for trusted computing.
One such requirement is a hardware component called a TPM.
TPM's supply the resources necessary for Wave's services.

The milestones of this achievement were not entirely invisible. Somebody catalyzed the trusted computing movement. I think the 5-gorilla consortium (comprising Compaq, Hewlett Packard, IBM, Intel, and Microsoft) that formed the precursor to the TCG (the TCPA) had its inception in the summer of 1998:

http://ragingbull.lycos.com/mboard/boards.cgi?board=WAVX&read=1212

In any event, somebody kept Wave relevant -- and might even have made Wave indispensable -- during the evolution of trusted computing through TCPA/Palladium/LaGrande/NGSCB/TCG. In the face of those who insisted that software-only solutions would overwhelm Wave's insistence on client-side security-silicon, Wave persevered. They pressed ahead. They solved problems. And they resolved doubts. In the face of those who insisted that the server-goliaths would crush Wave's client-side paradigm, Wave persevered. They served as vanguard in the movement to establish trust at the edges of networks. That battle seems won. The TCPA/Palladium/LaGrande/NGSCB/TCG has yielded specifications for hardware on the client side as requirements for trusted computing, and that hardware enables Wave's services.

Whatever Wave has accomplished with the TCG, it was not achieved on one day in July 2003. It is the product of a sustained effort. The people at Wave have been doing the work last week and last month and last year and the years before.

Best wishes,
John